Book Review

John Dies at the End, David Wong aka Jason Pargin

John Dies at the End, David Wong aka Jason Pargin

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

St. Martin’s, 2010 reprint of 2009 original, 480 pages, C$18.50 pb, ISBN 978-0-312-65914-1

Ever since the rise of the Internet, the expression “cult novel” doesn’t mean what it used to.  Once upon a time, it conjured images of a battered paperback passed from one set of hands to the other, its hushed-tone reputation growing through the yellowed pages of mimeographed fanzines or late-night college-dorm conversations.  Nowadays, it’s almost too easy for things to earn cult status.  Quasi-forgotten novel from the sixties discussed by half-a-dozen readers on Goodreads?  Cult.  Mid-list writer with fifty comments on her latest blog post?  Cult figure.  Episodic novel published at irregular intervals on an out-of-the-way web site and discovered by a growing number of readers thanks to blog-of-mouth?  So-cult-it-hurts.

And that takes us to John Dies at the End, a horror/humor hybrid which was written and self-published on the web by Jason Pargin, a writer best known as “David Wong” for incisive essays such as the famous “Monkeysphere” piece.  Having attracted a devoted following, Wong added material to the story for years before wrapping it all up for publication.  The result is quite unlike anything you’ve read so far.

The adventures of John and David, two twenty-something slackers who find themselves involved in paranormal affairs despite their best intentions, John Dies at the End blends stoner comedy with existential horror and ends up as a hip mix of cool things.  Thanks to Wong’s irreverent narration, the novel recycles, twists and extends familiar tropes in a potent mixture of dread and comedy.  For seasoned horror/fantasy readers, John Dies at the End is particularly interesting in that while it’s clearly aware of genre antecedents, it’s clearly not beholden to the genre in its narrative construction.  The web-serial origins of the story are clearest in considering its structure: the novel divides itself into two major adventures, interrupted by a shorter interlude episode.  Perhaps most significantly, Wong has a decidedly irreverent attitude toward familiar plot conventions: The protagonist’s narration is rich in self-awareness, peaking in a late-book refusal to further investigate a troubling mystery.  (A good thing too, since he admits that had he done so at that time, he would have killed himself.  By the end of the story, we readers understand what he means.)  When I say that John Dies at the End is a delightfully profane novel, I’m not speaking as much about the harsh language of the book as much about its willingness to embrace irreverence in dealing with genre ideas.

On a related note, John Dies at the End is also particularly good at maintaining both the laughs and the chills that a hybrid novel should ideally contain.  There are at least two deeply troubling ideas embedded in the very narration of the novel, challenging our ideas about unreliable narrators.  Otherwise, Wong doesn’t hesitate to laden on the graphic descriptions when talking about the horrors that confront John and David on a near-constant basis. 

It helps that the funny parts are almost laugh-out-loud hilarious.  I have a particular affection for a chair fight between the heroes and supernatural demons, in which the hits only stop when the characters run out of chair-related fighting puns. 

It all amounts to an engrossing, hilarious, chilling and unique reading experience.  John Dies at the End is almost the definition of a break-out first novel: You can see here the culmination of years of development, ideas piled upon each other as if the writer had put everything he’d ever wanted to say between two covers.  The pacing has to be frantic to keep up with the inventiveness, and if the structure suffers a bit from the development process, who cares?  It’s one more welcome quirk for a book loved for its quirkiness.

And from quirks, we quickly go back to cult.  Of course, few things truly stay cult these days, and so it is that John Dies at the End was successfully adapted for the big screen in 2012.  The film is quite enjoyable, but the legions of new fans who will come to the book after the movie will be delighted to find out that the film has maybe only half the plot of the novel: Save for the first third and the last tenth, there’s almost an entirely new film’s worth of stuff in the novel, including some of the most disturbing material in the book.  (The film, for all of its qualities, is considerably funnier than horrific.)  This review may have begun by suggesting that the death of old-style cult status is somehow a bad thing, but let’s be clearer: At a time where everything is cult thanks to immediate electronic communications, nothing is cult.  Which is fortunate, given that nobody is a completely mainstream individual.  We are all of our one-person cult culture.  Given that, doesn’t it make you positively gleeful that something as strange and enjoyable as John Dies at the End can be written, published and enjoyed by exactly its rightful target audience?

Inferno, Dan Brown

Inferno, Dan Brown

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Doubleday, 2013, 480 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-385-53785-8

How appropriate that Dan Brown’s Inferno would have me thinking about catastrophe theory and how it relates to reviewing: If Brown can link trans-humanism, obsolete Malthusian hysteria, Florentine history and Dante’s Inferno in the service of a moderately dull thriller, then what’s stopping me from misappropriating a branch of mathematical theory in order to make the point that I’m suddenly exasperated by Brown’s shtick?

I suppose that a few reminders and pieces of background information are in order: Inferno is Brown’s sixth novel, the fourth to feature “symbologist” Robert Langon racing against the clock to solve intricate historical puzzles before a very modern and immediate threat unfolds.  The Da Vinci Code (2003) needs no introduction as one of the most widely read novel of the past decade, leading to controversy and a movie adaption in 2006; Angels and Demons (2000) was also adapted to the big-screen in 2009, whereas The Lost Symbol (2009) made a splash as the first direct sequel to The Da Vinci Code after years of silence from Brown. 

Inferno shows up four years later, and delivers almost exactly what readers had been expecting: Standard thriller mechanics set against a richly-detailed travelogue, as the protagonist uses arcane knowledge to fight against a very contemporary threat.  This time around, it’s Florence (and a few other European destinations later in the novel) that provide the scenery, historical facts and enigmas to solve. 

But the real mystery is this: I have defended Dan Brown against a number of detractors in the past, especially when I pointed out the savvier aspects of The Da Vinci Code against those who wanted to dismiss the book entirely.  Save for Digital Fortress, I could find good things to say about every one of Brown’s other books.  Why, then, do I feel so exasperated and frustrated by Inferno?

It does handle a few things quite competently.  The initial set-up makes good use of the good old amnesia trope in order to place our protagonist in desperate circumstances.  Why is he in a Florentine hospital?  Why does he have a dangerous-looking artifact in his possessions?  And why-oh-why are people shooting at him?  As he retraces his steps with the help of a beautiful smart woman (the fourth in as many books –Langdon clearly isn’t very good at long-term relationships), he get to understand that he’s going through a do-over of his past few days, hoping to avoid what put him under medical care.

And for about three-quarter of the book, it feels dull and interminable.  The accumulation of historical details that Langdon absorbs is a flood of trivia that has little to do with the plot, and unless you happen to be fascinated by Florentine history to a level to rival the Roman, Parisian/Londonian and Washingtonian settings of the previous Langdon novels, chances are that Inferno will be a tough slog.  Readers will make it through by repeating to themselves that it will get better, eventually.  Or that the novel may work better if you’re on the ground in Florence, pointing at the things described in the novel.

And while it does get better, this change for the best comes at the expense of credibility-destroying narrative tricks in which villains are revealed to be heroes, allies are unmasked as psychopathological monsters and everything Langdon thought he knew (or more pointedly didn’t) crumbles as a sham.  In order to do that, Brown has to skirt perilously close to lying to his audience –readers who don’t like such narrative sleight-of-hand won’t find much to love here.  On the other hand, it does give a narrative kick in the pants to what had, until then, been a fairly sedate thriller, so there’s that.

But as the last act of the novel unfolds, my boredom at the novel transformed into annoyance, especially as the villain’s plan was revealed.  While Brown does his damndest to give a shred of justification to the actions of his antagonist by pointing out the evils of overpopulation, his screed seems to be roughly forty years out of date, and unsupported by current research.

(To summarize a complex set of objections, in a nutshell: Overpopulation is real and dangerous, but unlike the alarmist predictions of the 1970s, we now know a few things: Big populations have advantages for just about everything, from medical care to arts development to scientific progress to a well-functioning economy to better models for feeding a densely-packed community.  Better yet: Demographic statistics clearly demonstrate that overpopulation is a self-regulating problem, and that the world’s population will stabilize within a few decades –in fact is already doing so in large areas of the world.  Furthermore, advances in agriculture, environmentalism and logistics show that sustainable populations are within reach –the realities of 2013 disprove most of the so-called “realistic” thinking of the 1970s.  Simply put: Overpopulation is solving itself to non-problematic status.)

Lunatic thinking by a novel’s villain is, of course, nothing new or unexpected.  The end of Inferno, however, suggests that this is lunatic thinking by the author himself.  The world-changing stunt at the end of the novel is problematic on numerous levels.  Even by the standards of previous novels, it may be time for Langdon to take an indefinite retirement while Brown moves on to other protagonists, because the universe he inhabits is getting cluttered by incompatible mythologies, radical events and Grand Revelations.

Other annoyances abound: After several bout with Brown’s tone-deaf style, I’m finally acknowledging that he could write better.  I’m not at all pleased by the easy equation of trans-humanism with cuckoo-crazy antagonists.  Langdon is still as boring a protagonist as it’s possible to write in popular fiction.  The ending shows that the protagonist’s efforts all were for naught, negating the point of the narrative.  And have I mentioned that before the frantic last quarter of the novel, practically nothing noteworthy happens as we’re fed reams of Florentine history?

Aas you already surely know, faithful reader, catastrophe theory is the study of “sudden shifts in behavior arising from small changes in circumstances”.  None of what has annoyed me in Inferno (the digressions, the nonsense science, the bad writing, the repetitive plotting, allies revealed as villains, Langdon’s lack of personality, the insane plot twists) hasn’t shown up in at least two of Brown’s previous novels.  But something has certainly changed since The Lost Symbol: myself as a reader, Brown’s smugness as a writer, the cultural matrix in which we live, or some deep zeitgeist shift barely perceptible through anyone’s Twitter feed.  As a result, I find myself disenchanted by Inferno and generally put off by Dan Brown as a writer.  His shtick doesn’t feel interesting any more, and I’m not at all tempted to defend him anymore.  Small changes, big behavioral shifts: I don’t intend to buy his next novel.  I’m pretty sure I already know how it turns out.

I am Spock, Leonard Nimoy

I am Spock, Leonard Nimoy

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Hyperion, 1995, 352 pages, ISBN 0-786-86182-7

At some point over the past few years, I got my hands on a copy of Leonard Nimoy’s second autobiography, titled I am Spock.  Dimly aware that the title was a reference to a first autobiography titled I am not Spock, I refrained from cracking open the book, hoping that someday I’d be able to read both books back-to-back and get the best out of the entire experience.  Against all odds, I got my wish when my work manager left a battered paperback copy of I am not Spock lying on her desk.  So how do the two compare?

It’s worth keeping in mind that I am not Spock was published in 1975, at a time when cult interest in the then-defunct first Star Trek series was growing rapidly.  Nimoy earned much attention for his portrayal of the alien Mr. Spock, an unlikely sex-symbol who threatened the actor with typecasting and caused all sorts of amusing confusion when fans called by his character’s name or reflected upon him the qualities of the character.  I am not Spock, upon close reading, reveals no real animosity between Nimoy and Spock –merely a mildly-frustrated desire to distinguish between the character and the actor.  (Hence the book’s dialogues between actor Nimoy and character Spock.)

While much of I am not Spock is about Nimoy’s formative experiences and the roles he played before and immediately after Star Trek, you can imagine that much of the book is about the making of Trek’s original three-season run, and the conflicts that eventually developed between Nimoy and the producers.  It’s an early revealing look into the difficulties of the show (one that would later be completed by other Trek autobiographies) that retains an evergreen fascination for fans.  Interestingly enough, it’s the now-dated parts of the book that remain most fascinating for contemporary readers, from slightly-psychedelic passages in which Nimoy argues with his alter-ego, or the typically-seventies expressions, hobbies and attitudes that Nimoy describes.

I Am Spock’s title became mandatory considering that fans were not at all pleased with the title of the first book.  Hoping to make amends, Nimoy presented his twenty-years-later follow-up autobiography as even more of an unabashed love letter to his character.  You’d think that the narrative would simply pick up where the previous one ends, but I Am Spock incorporates and updates much of the previous book’s content.  The good news is that it makes the previous book redundant if you can’t find it.  The bad news is that if you’ve just read the previous book, much of the second one will feel like a re-thread, down to the same anecdotes and punch-lines.  There’s also a peculiar weirdness in reading I am Spock as a response to a book that it essentially contains: Your mind can expand in strange directions trying to make sense of this.

But there is new content as well.  On the Star Trek front, I am Spock discusses the unexpected revival of Trek over the years, which included a series of successful movies featuring the cast of the original series.  On non-Trek matters, Nimoy discusses other acting jobs, and a successful foray in movie directing that saw him direct two Trek movies and the commercially-successful comedy Three Men and a Baby.  This, with the added benefit of twenty more years’ hindsight, make the follow-up book quite a bit more interesting than the 1975 installment: it presents Nimoy as a seasoned entertainer, able to fluently discuss challenges behind and in front of the camera. 

One almost expects a third installment in 2015 called I Will Always be Spock; Nimoy, after all, has continued his association with the character by playing him as recently as in 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, and has added more roles and artistic activities to a lengthy career. 

Unusually enough, I would advise time-pressed readers to skip the first book and focus on the second: while both are breezy, fun and revealing autobiographies, the second one has more to offer and repeats much of the first book’s material.  Reading them back-to-back is not a fascinating experience in how twenty years can change a person: it’s more of a exercise in repetitiveness.  Leonard Nimoy is Spock, and let’s leave it at that. (Sorry, Zachary Quinto.)

The Travis Chase Trilogy, Patrick Lee

The Travis Chase Trilogy, Patrick Lee

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

The Breach, Harper, 2009, 384 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-06-158445-9
Ghost Country, Harper, 2010, 384 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-06-158444-2
Deep Sky, Harper, 2011, 384 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-06-195879-3

As someone who loves both Science Fiction and techno-thrillers, I’m always a bit surprised at how few authors have been able to combine the strengths of both genres into a hybrid success.  Science Fiction is about awe at the possibilities of the universe and the futures available to us; techno-thrillers are usually a distillation of the same possibilities, in a contemporary setting that can make everything feel more relevant.  Of course, there are differences in approach and easy pitfalls in both genres: At its worst, techno-thrillers reject the intrusion of the future in our realities, making sure that the genie goes back the box at the end of the story.  Meanwhile, bad science-fiction is about gadgets more than human emotions, and narrative patterns that only make sense to long-time genre readers. 

Patrick Lee’s Travis Chase trilogy is a superb exercise in combining techno-thriller plot mechanics with science-fiction concepts and it’s so successful that it made me giddy with pure reading excitement for the first time in a long while.  Lee doesn’t just play in the sandbox of both genres, but combines them in ways that feel fresh and exciting, playing with the possibilities while never quite betraying both audiences with dead-end ideas.

The best readers for those books are probably jaded and familiar with tropes of both genres.  Lee’s rapid pacing and go-for-broke plotting is earnest to a point that at times approach self-parody, but it fully shows its cards in the first few chapters.  (It takes a special kind of reader, maybe not you, to appreciate passages such as “He wasn’t going to kill her.  He’d accrued enough of that brand of guilt for one lifetime. ¶ But he was going to kill again. ” [P.33] ) Consider that within seventy-five pages of the first volume, our protagonist (an ex-cop and ex-con) hiking through the Alaskan wilderness for a relaxing holiday ends up stumbling over the fresh wreckage of a sophisticated 747, discovers the body of the First Lady alongside a number of scientists, is given the missing to find hostages and kill them before they can betray national secrets, battles terrorists and discovers a dangerous omniscient artifact that takes over his mind, nearly leading to the launch of a limited nuclear strike against China.  To repeat: all of that takes place in the first seventy-five pages.  It gets crazier after that.

For our protagonist Travis Chase has become sucked into the world of The Breach, a secret government organization set up to manage the output of an accidental wormhole in a scientific facility deep under the American Midwest.  The Breach, you see, regularly spews out unusual, extraordinary, often dangerous alien objects.  Objects with near-magical powers.  Objects that could destroy a good chunk of the world if mishandled.

With a setup like that, it’s no wonder that the trilogy gets off roaring and seldom slows down.  Once Chase is accepted within The Breach, he’s quickly led to “the most dangerous building in the world” (how can you resist that as a narrative hook?) where he and other members of the organization engage in a prodigiously vertiginous game of logic-building taking in account that they’re up against an omniscient antagonist.  The gadgets that The Breach bring along help set up a deliciously over-the-top set-piece in which a lone team of special operatives gets to square off against an entire city of antagonists.  It’s ridiculously over-the-top and yet exactly the kind of virtuoso sequence that many techno-thrillers writers don’t have the imagination to conceive, let alone pull off.  Never mind the fantastic gadgets required to make it work: The entire trilogy seems to run from one science-fictional set-piece to another.  The Breach keeps running at a breathless pace, leading to a spectacular conclusion that puts a big question mark over the hero’s true nature.

The first volume depends upon the concept of The Breach and an omniscient trickster AI, but the second one, Ghost Country, gets to play with an unusual time machine.  Innovatively enough, Lee posits a pair of devices allowing to move back and forth between the present and a future fixed at the moment of the devices’ activation.  The problem is that the future, seventy-five years forward, clearly shows an imminent apocalypse, and nothing they do in the present can change the future.  How can they figure out what’s about to happen?  Naturally, this movement back-and-forth between the present and the future allows for some complicated action set-pieces, not to mention the intellectual thrill of chasing answers in two different realities.

As a follow-up, the third volume Deep Sky plays along with the idea of a secret at The Breach’s inception, along with a gadget that allows going back in time and re-living that moment with full access to the world of then.  There’s a crackling good sequence later in the book in which Chase gets to use knowledge that would have been impossible to get otherwise, cleverly turning the tables on his trap-laying antagonists.  Deep Sky’s end sequence goes back to mysteries left unsolved in the first volume to deliver a purely science-fictional conclusion that presents an arresting moral dilemma for the protagonist –and, perhaps, the reader.

Given the trilogy’s unending inventiveness, its straightforward muscular prose, its innovative action sequences, its uncomplicated characterization, its willingness to commit to world-changing events and it’s no surprise if I raced through all three books in a mere few days, rediscovering a pure honest joy of reading that I feared lost to my own jaded self.  The Travis Chase trilogy is fun to read like few other recent books, with enough weighty ideas to make a bit more than disposable entertainment.  No surprise if I eventually found myself selling the praises of the book enthusiastically to a table full of readers, with even the mild spoilers above seeming to give added attractiveness to the series.

I’m also, from a critical standpoint, impressed at Lee’s ability to combine SF elements within a thriller framework without necessarily compromising the science-fictional elements themselves.  By the end of the third volume, the world is irrevocably changed, and the protagonist has discovered a side of himself that’s potentially as ruthless and homicidal as any of history’s greatest dictators.  The concepts used to bring along this conclusion are as science-fictional as could be, so it’s surprising to realize that the trilogy is practically never marketed as science-fiction.  (The French translation, which is what brought me to the series, is published as overt SF by a specialized genre publisher.)  And yet it is: while some of the plotting is more thrillerish than science-fictional (I don’t think that the first volume’s Berne set-piece would have been accepted by an SF editor, although it clearly fits within the thriller genre’s accepted standards.) it never loses sight of SF’s central ability to play along with an idea until all the good possibilities are shown on-screen.  The trilogy may be built on impossible gadgets, but they’re great gadgets and they’re exploited to the full extent of their capabilities.  It’s books like those that make readers realize how rigid some genre boundaries have become, and welcome the possibilities of a bit of genre-bending.

While the trilogy isn’t flawless (the second book feel disconnected from the rest of the trilogy’s overall plot, the characters sometimes have a bit too much past history, there’s little rigor to the extrapolations and the over-the-top nature of the plot can be a bit daunting if you’re not already sympathetic to this kind of thing), it’s a memorable read and a completely satisfying reading experience.  As such, I’d rate it as quite a bit more valuable than many more thrillers that take no chances and don’t go beyond the most obvious ideas.  I certainly welcome reading more of Lee’s work in the future, and I hope that a lot of SF fans don’t let this trilogy pass them by due to a quirk of labelling.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentices, Lisa Abend

The Sorcerer’s Apprentices, Lisa Abend

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Free Press, 2011, 304 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 978-1-4391-7555-2

I first became aware of el Bulli from The Amateur Gourmet’s blog post/webcomic Dinner at El Bulli: The Greatest Restaurant in the World in August 2009.  Not being much of a foodie at the time, it was my glimpse into so-called “Molecular Cuisine” (a term everyone seems to hate) and a first look at the legend of el Bulli, a place intent on pushing back the definitions of food.  (It definitely left an impression: By February 2011, I was seated at Ottawa’s own Atelier to enjoy the local version of such an experimental restaurant and I still remember it as one of the best meals of my life.)

As of this writing in early 2013, El Bulli has become legendary… something helped along by the restaurant’s decision to close at the end of 2011 to transform itself into a still nebulously-defined “culinary think-tank”.  During its heyday, El Bulli was named the top restaurant in the world five successive times.  Its chef, Ferran Adrià, has become something of a celebrated genius, an emblem of the new Spanish culinary creativity.  As a result, there is little about el Bulli that hasn’t been documented, filmed, described or exclaimed about: There are documentary films, numerous books and countless newspaper articles to quench your thirst for more el Bull goodness. 

In this context, what’s left for Lisa Abend to show in The Sorcerer’s Apprentices?  Quite a bit, as it turns out: Taking a bottom-up look at el Bulli through the forty-some stagiaires (apprentices) that form the backbone of el Bulli’s workforce.  As Abend reveals, the mind-bending high-prep thirty-course nature of el Bulli’s groundbreaking cuisine isn’t made possible by high technology or advanced science: it’s made affordable solely due to the highly-skilled, unpaid labour that volunteered to work at el Bulli for an entire season.  The rewards are obvious: who wouldn’t want to hire someone with el Bulli on his resume?  Who wouldn’t want a chance to peek over Adrià’s shoulders?  Who wouldn’t want to spend a few months working at “the best restaurant in the world”?

There’s a flip-side, of course: Despite el Bulli’s reputation, the truth is that much of the stagiaires’ work is back-breaking rather than groundbreaking.  While the working conditions there seem quite a bit better than most restaurants (ample space to move, workspaces that don’t get overly hot, no reed to run or shout, tightly-regulated reservations that takes much of the chaos out of the evening rush), a six-month season at el Bulli involves living in a small rural Spanish city far from their families, with long hours, mindless repetitive work and not much in terms of pay.  Abend structures her book around the experiences of roughly a dozen of the stagiaires, exploring their backgrounds, the frequent sacrifices required to get the job and then keep it throughout the year.  A number of stagiaires drop out, sometimes happily (getting a job at a prestigious restaurant) and sometimes less so.

Despite spending a long time at the restaurant during the 2009 season, Abend herself remains a discrete presence behind the scenes as she describe the daily rhythm of el Bulli.  She presents the stagiaires’ stories simply, doesn’t shy away from delving into their fears and moments of doubt, and in doing so humanizes the el Bulli mythology.  Adrià himself remains a formidable presence, but the book wisely shies away from too lengthy contacts with him.  This is about the apprentices, not the sorcerer: It’s about the reality of el Bulli rather the mythology… even if the mythology ends up reinforced by the reality.

It does amount to an absorbing read, no matter one’s membership level in the ranks of foodies.  There’s some amazing material here in describing how some meals are put together (the crown going to a rose/artichoke plate that’s really roses masquerading as artichokes), and one of the few ways the book could have been better would have been with a stronger visual component to illustrate its subject matter.  It’s a well-constructed book with a fascinated subject, and its execution is well above mere competence.  What’s not to like?  Now that el Bulli has closed, perhaps for good, it’s essential to keep capsule reminders of the way things happened at the restaurant during its heyday.

Cooking for Geeks, Jeff Potter

Cooking for Geeks, Jeff Potter

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

O’Reilly Media, 2010, 432 pages, C$43.99 tp, ISBN 978-0-596-80588-3

To repeat the obvious: Books aren’t just about their subject matter than they are about their relationship with their intended audience.  You can turn an ordinary book into a remarkable oddity simply by shifting the audience, and that’s where the genius of Jeff Potter’s Cooking for Geeks comes in.

Yes, there have been a lot of cookbooks over the past few years.  Cooking has become something cool, and cookbooks are reliably the top-selling genre of non-fiction books.  Everyone needs to eat, so the theoretical audience for cookbooks is everyone.  Who isn’t hungry for a few more delicious recipes? So when publishing house O’Reilly, specialized in technical manuals for computer experts, decides to publish something called Cooking for Geeks, you can expect some serious cooking advice for equally-serious nerds. 

One of the best things about the book is that it makes no assumptions of competence.  Geeks can learn anything, and much of the book is dedicated to re-explaining cooking from a technical perspective.  If ever you’re in the market for an explanation of food that somehow involves references to UNIX, solid engineering principles and geek-culture icons such as Mythbusters and XKCD, then, well, Cooking for Geeks is exactly what its title promises.

As may be expected from a geek-book explaining the world, Cooking for Geeks is both playful and endlessly curious.  One of the earliest exercise in the book, demonstrating how recipes aren’t sacred tests, consists in data-mining the internet for pancake recipes, and then averaging out the results into a peer-reviewed meta-recipe of sorts.  Cooking isn’t like programming in that precise syntax isn’t required (loose typing is fine), but cooking is like coding in that there are often many, many ways to get to the same results.  (It’s no accident if Cooking for Geeks contains both “don’t deviate from the recipe” and “deviate from the recipe” as fundamental advice.)  If everything else fails, you can either recompile (alter the ingredients) or go COTS (order pizza).

Potter’s assured main text is enlivened by numerous pull-outs and interviews with geek and cooking notables.  The interviews bring different voices into the narrative, explore tangential subjects or simply show how cooking is unusually well-suited to personal explorations.  All interviewees are enthusiastic about their topics, and this attitude carries over into the book’s cheerful boosterism for cooking.  Nearly every page of Cooking for Geeks brims with the typical geek attitude of endless curiosity about the world.  Compared to other introductions to cooking, Potter’s technical tangents are what makes the book worth reading.

From relatively basic beginnings, Cooking for Geeks gets quite a bit more complicated as it goes on, eventually touching upon deeply geeky cooking innovations such as molecular cuisine, sous-vide and “power-tool” cooking in which warranties get voided.  Throw in an exemplary chapter on food safety and the result is a well-rounded introduction to the culinary arts for an audience that wouldn’t necessary know where to begin in the vast, vast ocean of cooking-related information.  Potter has done the research, cleared away the confusion and presented an invaluable distillation

Will it transform anyone into a decent cook?  It depends on readers’ follow-up, of course: The danger with cookbooks, no matter the audience, is that they are read enthusiastically and then gradually forgotten without having made an impact, falling victim to the chronic lack of time that everyone (not just geeks) is belabouring under.  The same amount of time required to become a proficient coder is the same as one required to become a decent cook, and no amount of cheerleading can go against the pressures of life.  But that’s outside the book, and in the meantime Cooking for Geeks is almost exactly the best cookbook that could have worn this title.

Savages, Don Winslow

Savages, Don Winslow

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Simon & Schuster, movie tie-in reprint edition of 2010 original, 336 pages, C$17.00 tp, ISBN 978-1-4516-6715-8

Life is filled with regrets, and as a dedicated reader, one of mine is that there’s simply not enough time in the world to read all the books I want to read.  (Especially given that I intend to spend the next few years raising my infant daughter rather than reading voraciously.)  I know my own corner of genre fiction pretty well, but there are so many other good books out there that I can’t possibly hope to read them all.  But then again, maybe that’s a feature of the reading universe rather than a bug –it means that there are always, and forever will be, great books to read.  Wonders await the constant reader.

In this case, I’m quite specifically happy to have discovered Don Winslow and Savages.  It took Oliver Stone’s film adaptation to bring me to the novel, but no matter: Savages is a great contemporary crime novel, told in a vivid and efficient style that had me reading the book in the kind of happy trance that I only get from exceptional fiction.

Little of the impact of the book can be guessed from a synopsis of the plot, although much of the novel’s hip contemporary flavour certainly comes through: In early-2009 South California, two boutique drug entrepreneurs are targeted by a Mexican drug cartel: The cartels love their superior product but wish to muscle in on their profits.  When the two small-time dealers try to opt out of the “deal”, things quickly escalate when the young woman who loves them equally (yes, this means exactly what you think it does) is kidnapped and held against their cooperation.  Before long, our protagonists are pitting corrupt DEA agents against a crime matriarch and her brutal enforcer.

As a pathological reader with a professional sideline in film reviewing, I have learned a long time ago that it’s always best to go from film to novel, appreciating the way a novel expands upon the events of the film.  Savages does something more, though: while the film adds an unnecessary meta-fictional trick at the end of the story (one that both softens and weakens the hard ending of the novel), the book will surprise movie viewers and please readers through sheer style.  From the very first chapter (solely composed of a popular two-word obscenity) onward, it’s clear that Winslow’s not content with the usual objective tight-third-person hum-drum narration.  Oh no: Savages roars on full-octane style.  Ellipses, parentheses, in-your-face omniscient narration, interrupted sentences, impressionistic fragments, script excerpts, invented vocabulary (as in “PAQU” for Passive-Aggressive Queen of the Universe), short paragraphs, punchy sentences are all part of Winslow’s arsenal here and the result is one constantly absorbing read from beginning to end.

Despite the economy of words, Winslow also ends up a surprisingly funny writer.  Never mind the implied dialogue between narrator and reader (“and no, there won’t be a quiz at the end because we’re talking about stoners here” [P.21]).  Have a look at this paragraph describing the qualities of a particularly potent strain of marijuana:

This was a plant that could almost get up, walk around, find a lighter, and fire itself up.  Read Wittgenstein, have deep conversations about the meaning of life with you, cocreate a television series for HBO, cause peace in the Middle East (“ The Israelis and Palestinians could coexist in two parallel universes, sharing space but not time”).  It took a strong man –or a strong woman, in O’s case –to take more than one hit of the Ultra White Widow. [P.37]

Hilarious… and Savages is filled with passages such as this one.  It amounts to a memorable reading experience that trades heft for speed and impact: It’s a short novel, but one that fully rewards the reader.  As a look at the modern drug business, it feels credible.  But it’s as a piece of storytelling that Savages shines best.  I haven’t read a novel told quite like this before, and I do like the result.  I may currently be in the middle of a self-imposed moratorium on buying new books, but once I get back to my addict ways, Don Winslow is on the list of authors who deserve some further attention.

Night of the Living Trekkies, Kevin David Anderson & Sam Stall

Night of the Living Trekkies, Kevin David Anderson & Sam Stall

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Quirk, 2011, 256 pages, C$16.95 tp, ISBN 978-1-5947-4463-1

I should probably start this review by reminding infrequent readers that 2012 is my first semi-sabbatical year as far as reviewing stuff on the internet is concerned.  I’m a newly-minded dad, my time is limited, and one good way to give myself more time is to cut down on reading.  But my birthday is this month, and, heck, I deserve the occasional treat. That’s how I ended up cracking open Kevin David Anderson & Sam Stall’s Night of the Living Trekkies, my first novel in months that’s not motivated by having just seen the movie adaptation.

My expectations weren’t particularly high.  The entire plot is almost entirely explained in the title: Mash a Star Trek convention with a zombie invasion and, well, there you have it. We know how this thing’s going to go from years of zombie movies. As a reader looking for a bit of escapism, I was expecting the usual zombie-invasion narrative arc, some Trek references and (hopefully) a happy ending deviating from the usual “everybody dies” cliché.

Fortunately, Andreson and Stall are good at exceeding expectations. Night of The Living Trekkies manages to deliver what it should deliver and add a little bit more on the top.  We’ve covered the essentials: it affectionately presents some of the fun surrounding a Star Trek convention (even if it’s one shut down early for cause of the rising undead), then overwhelms it with the Zombie Apocalypse.  There’s no discernible contempt here for either Star Trek or zombies as the authors write from an insider’s perspective.  The Trek trivia runs both broad and deep: while die-hard trekkers will be tickled by some of the references, those whose appreciation for the series runs shallower shouldn’t feel as if they’re missing out on much.  (Here’s a test to rate yourself on the Trekker/Zombie-fan scale: Can you picture a Klingon decapitating a zombie with a bat’leth?  How does that mental picture make you feel?)

Where the book starts to deliver on more than the stock premise is in its characterization.  Our hero is an Afghanistan veteran whose has come home with the intention of hiding out in a job with no responsibilities and zero potential for danger.  In the midst of a zombie uprising, though, our protagonist finds himself forced into a position of leadership with a lot of potential for personal growth.  He is soon surrounded by an assortment of well-sketched characters, some of them with conflicting agendas.  While the novel has a few technically regrettable point-of-view problems (including a temporary jump into a minor character’s thought processes), Night of the Living Trekkies is written with a certain amount of narrative cleverness, and the novel is rarely less than interesting.  Well-conceived sequences reach an apex of sorts with a dramatic action sequence in a parking garage.  The chuckles are carefully balanced with the chills, creating a successful comedy/horror hybrid.  It even comes to develop a richer back-story than the usual “zombies braaaiiins” shtick, leading to a solidly science-fictional rationale for the zombies that dovetails nicely with the Star Trek motif of the novel.

In a few words, Night of the Living Trekkies succeeds at what it intends to be.  The cover makes it clear that this is supposed to be lurid pulp-fiction, but it delivers on this premise without going over-the-top with the gore, or forgetting that a solid plot is essential in carrying the side-gags.  It even had me writing my first review in nearly two months and isn’t that something for someone who should be spending time cleaning up his basement?

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John le Carré

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John le Carré

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Penguin, 2012 movie tie-in reprint of 1974 original, 381 pages, C$15.90 hc, ISBN 978-0143120933

I’m hardly the first one to note the fact, but as I age, I understand that some books are best read by older readers.  Tastes change, our knowledge of the world evolves and we come to appreciate atypical takes on standard material.

I first read John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in my early twenties, and it may be better to say that I tried to read it.  I was on a thriller binge at the time, and had to sample le Carré’s fiction.  Alas, I still vividly remember being so disappointed by the conclusion of A Small Town in Germany, and not quite knowing what to make of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s dull and dense accumulation of details in non-linear chronology. 

Flash forward twenty years, and some things have changed in the meantime.  By 2004, I was able to give a lukewarm review to The Russia House.  By 2007, I was positively enthusiastic about The Constant Gardener, helped along by great memories of the film adaptation.  When I watched the 2011 big-screen version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I knew I had to give another chance to the novel.  (I have no shame in leveraging movie adaptation in order to improve my reading experiences.  With time, by brain has learned how to use visuals in order to make the reading experience even more enjoyable.)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy certainly feels a lot more interesting than it did two decades ago.  I’m no longer necessarily opposed to le Carré’s meandering style, or his dedication to presenting a view of the intelligence establishment that favors analysis and reflection over over-the-top action heroics.  My own years within a bureaucracy make it easier to appreciate the inner working of the British intelligence service as described in the novel, and the emphasis on adult themes seem to resonate more strongly now than they did before.  At last, I’m at a point in my life where reading about a humble public servant uncovering a Soviet spy through conversations and deductions fits my definition of a cozy thriller. 

The story is archetypical spy stuff: There’s a Soviet agent working within the British Intelligence Service, and it’s up to disgraced/retired intelligence analyst George Smiley to uncover him.  A predecessor has narrowed down the possibilities to four people, all of whom have suspiciously ascended to the top of the national spy establishment.  But it’s up to Smiley to work outside the system and assemble the pieces of the puzzle: gently interrogating witnesses, poring over documents, reminiscing about the past with past colleagues and thinking really hard about what he has learned are the tools of his trade.  le Carré makes it clear that Smiley is a gifted interrogator, able to tease secrets out of his interlocutor without them even realizing it.  When comes the time to take action, Smiley’s methods are as subtle as they are efficient, leading to a terribly British climax in which he sits in a chair and waits for the arrival of the unknown traitor.

Stylistically, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a dense accumulation of details about its characters, chronology-hopping subplots, personal issues and trade jargon.  Le Carré’s literary style is low-key to the point of downplaying even important events, something that may unsettle readers with higher expectations of action.  (Again; see the movie first, and only read the book if you liked the film.)  Every conversation is described in subtle nuances, the narration barely tipping its hand when something important has happened.  Readers sometimes have access to Smiley’s inner monologues, but usually not: the voice of the novel floats around the plot without getting involved at all times.

The result can feel detached, cold, lengthy or meandering; all valid charges against this kind of procedural, reality-based spying suspense novel.  On the other hand, it succeeds at what it tries to do.  The result is interesting in its own right, and the fact that the novel was published in 1974 now tends to give it a nice patina of historical charm: it has aged well by remaining a reflection of its time.  Ultimately, what works best about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the change of pace is presents from much of the spy fiction genre: it’s still, nearly forty years later, a fairly unusual novel in this regard, and readers who have seen everything in the thriller genre may come to this novel (or, indeed, much of le Carré’s fiction) seeking something different.  While the novel won’t please all readers, it remains a quasi-definitive Cold War thriller, plunging us even today in a different time and place.  Is it any coincidence if it took me until my late thirties to appreciate that intention?

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Scholastic, 2010, 400 pages, C$19.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-439-02351-1

Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games” trilogy wraps up to a close with Mockingjay, a final entry that abandons the previous novels’ structure (which was admittedly wearing thin in Catching Fire) in favor of an outright story of rebellion against the established order of Panem.

After the events of the story so far, series narrator/heroine Katniss Everdeen shows up in Mockingjay even more damaged than she has ever been.  Forced to abandon the ruined remnants of her home district, coerced in acting as the Rebellion’s “Mockingjay” spokesperson, Katniss certainly isn’t an enthusiastic rebel.  It doesn’t take a long time for her to realize that the rebels aren’t necessarily morally superior to the regime they’re fighting against.  The book doesn’t end with another bout of the Hunger Games, but sends Katniss deep in enemy territory in the hope of ending the war.

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Mockingjay is the depiction of the heroine as a traumatized survivor.  Katniss’ heroics have only bought her most pain and suffering.  As the book progresses, she sees her ambiguous paramour Peeta brainwashed by opposing forces to the point that he tries to kill her.  A lot of people die around her, more poignantly toward the end of the novel.  Her thirst for vengeance isn’t noble or admirable, but twisted and self-destructive.  War isn’t glorified, but shown as an atrocity, and she can’t even be sure that the rebel leaders will be any better than the established order, which is the kind of thing that tempers any kind of enthusiasm.  Readers are brought along cringing and fearing the next plot point, especially when characters openly start discussing what is real and what isn’t.  (One can argue that the epilogue is just a hallucination, but that’s being a bit too mean.)

Fortunately, this increasing grimness isn’t a jarring evolution in the series.  The Hunger Games was noteworthy for its blood-thirstiness even in today’s unsentimental Young Adult marketplace, and Katniss’ gradual deterioration well in-line with her character’s arc through Catching Fire.  Given that she narrates the events, however, it does become a bit tedious to live in her head.  The announcement that Mockingjay would be adapted on-screen as two separate movies raises a few interesting questions regarding the re-structuring of the novel, especially given how much action takes place away from Katniss and thus far removed from her narration.  There are a few plot cheats in order to give her essential information, but it’s going to be interesting to see how the novel makes the leap from first-person to third-person narration.  More explosions are likely, but what’s going to be more interesting is in seeing whether the rather loose plotting of the book will be further diffused by spreading it over more than three hours, or if the filmmakers will be able to tighten up the story.  (Given the first film’s clunky third-person exposition, it doesn’t bode well.) 

Otherwise, it does bring the series to a conclusion, even though some plot threads are cut short in the rush to complete the ending.  Katniss, damaged as she is, is still a likable protagonist, and the characters surrounding her all have a role to play in the unfolding of the story.  Anyone who makes it to the third volume is likely to be satisfied, even though this novel is substantially different in structure from its predecessor.  While the trilogy may not be entirely believable nor all that pleasant to experience, it’s a well-told story with a strong heroine, and the bittersweet conclusion decently wraps it up.

Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Scholastic, 2009, 391 pages, C$19.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-439-02349-8

The plot summary for Suzanne Collins’ Catching Fire, sequel to The Hunger Games, almost reads like a cheap joke: After surviving the deadly Hunger Games of the first novel, protagonist Katniss has to… do it again.  It’s a legitimate tactic for sequels to repeat favored plot elements from previous books, but… really?

Ah well; this isn’t the series’ first uncomfortable encounter with the problem of basic suspension of disbelief, and while one could fault the author for going back to the same formula, Catching Fire does feel different enough to hold our interest.

It’s clear from the beginning that series heroine Katniss Everdeen has been severely damaged from the events of the first volume.  Back in her home environment of District 12, Katniss has been freed from daily concerns: her victory ensures that her family and her district are well-fed, but at the same time have isolated her from any semblance of normal life.  It’s also clear that she has made powerful enemies during her time in the arena: A surprise visit by oppressor-in-chief President Snow makes it clear that her stunts have not been appreciated by the ones in charge, and that she better behave.

Of course, things don’t go as planned, and telling surly Katniss how to behave is bound to backfire.  As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that the entire country is about to go in flames, with insurrections fanned by Katniss’ own behavior.

The twist of the knife becomes more obvious mid-way through, as the Seventy-Fifth Hunger Games participants are culled from past winners… landing Katniss and her ambiguous paramour Peeta back in the arena.  These Games, taking up the last third of the book, are a great deal more fragmented than the first ones, in-between Katniss’ increasingly fragile state of mind and various manipulations by the game-masters.  And that’s not even mentioning third-party interference in the conduct of the games…

While The Hunger Games focused on the Games in a general contest of rebellion against authoritarian rule, Catching Fire clearly shifts the emphasis of the plot onto the growing insurrection.  For Katniss, the political becomes undistinguishable from the personal as she and her immediate circle of friends and family are directly targeted by the regime.  Surviving the Games once was enough, but being thrown in the arena again?  It’s a wonder the regime in place actually expected that to work.

This, if dwelled upon, rapidly leads us back to the series’ severe credibility problems.  In fact, the more we learn about the future world of Panem, the less-believable it becomes.  We’re supposed to believe in a mixture of very advanced technology intermingling with a poor coal-producing District 12 with a few mere thousand citizens.  This lack of believability is where Collins’ series continues to run aground, but it’s not clear whether this is a evidence of Collins’ lack of skill in world-building, or an unsuccessful attempt to simplify a plot structure in order to make it understandable to young adult audiences.

Fortunately, there are more interesting things to discuss than the series’ unconvincing background.  Katniss’s narration seems even more fragmented here than in the first volume, lending a clipped rhythm to the prose that does a lot to propel readers forward.  Her refusal to play anyone else’s game seems even stronger here (especially now that’ she’s dragged back in the arena rather than volunteering for it.  Her attempts at self-sacrifice get less and less effective.)  Collins also adds a number of other characters to the series, adding complexity and nuance along the way.

The science-fictional nature of the story seems more obvious in Catching Fire, which suggests spectacular visuals given the inevitable movie adaptation.  Adult readers with an interest in the current cultural teen zeitgeist will find little that’s objectionable here for young-adult readers, and even quite a bit of entertainment along the way as they zip through the book.  It’s a middle-of-the-trilogy book, but a competent one… and readers who make it to the final line of Catching Fire will immediately jump to concluding volume Mockingjay to find out what happens next.

Far Horizons, Ed. Robert Silverberg

Far Horizons, Ed. Robert Silverberg

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Harpercollins, 1999, 482 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-380-97630-7

If you’re looking for a review of the science-fiction short-story anthology Far Horizons, edited by Robert Silverberg, I suggest that you look elsewhere.  Because as I close the book, I have plenty of things to say… but few of them actually have anything to do with its specific content.

I suppose that a few declarative sentences may not hurt in setting the stage, though, so here goes: Far Horizons is an all-original anthology in which Silverberg has asked an all-star roster of Science Fiction authors to write short stories set in their well-known fictional universes.  The result brings together new stories set in David Brin’s Uplift Universe, Ursula K. Leguin’s Hamish universe, and so on.  Niven’s Known Universe may be missing, but otherwise what you get is a series of call-backs to SF’s best-known universes from the 1960s to the 1980s.  Nearly every story has an award-winning pedigree, and even moderately knowledgeable readers will know every single name in the table of content.  As far as sheer SF star-power is concerned, I don’t think there’s been quite another anthology like this.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the stories are good, new, inventive or even enjoyable.  Most of the writers try to position their stories in cracks left by their novels.  Orson Scott Card, for instance, uses his story to describe an interlude in-between Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide (that story was later collected in First Meetings.)  Minor episodes are what Far Horizons has to offer, although the story I enjoyed the most, Pohl’s “The Boy Who Would Live Forever”, is set to run in parallel with its parent Heechee saga.  (That story first had me thinking about re-reading Gateway, only to recant as I was reminded of just how weird the later Heechee novels eventually became compared to the first novel.)  Some of the stories from writers I was eagerly anticipating, such as David Brin and Dan Simmons, left me almost completely cold.

Still, even in disappointing, the anthology got me thinking about the renewal of the SF genre and how to let go of the past.

Readers should be aware that the next few declarative sentences are far more personal in nature, and have even less to do with Far Horizons: I became a father in 2012, and (newborn duties obliging) took a voluntary year off from freelance reviewing.  This “semi-hiatus” isn’t absolute (hence this review), but it has shaped my reviewing choices so far this year.  I’m reading a lot of books that I don’t expect to review, which includes anthologies.  I rarely review anthologies because they’re seldom coherent enough to offer a solid reviewing thesis, and also because I tend to skip a lot of stories if they don’t grab me by their second page.  I can finish anthologies in two commuter bus rides, but it won’t be because I have read them from beginning to end.

I’m also using this semi-hiatus to put some distance between myself and what I used to do out of routine.  Becoming a father changes things (everything), and my relationship with reading genres is being tested: What was I doing out of inertia, compared with actual honest interest?  I have nearly stopped buying books “to take a chance” on new or marginally-interesting authors.  My book reviews are now motivated by creative impulses rather than habit. (i.e.: “I’m going to go insane if I don’t write this review right now!”)  And, perhaps inevitably, I’m using this distancing to re-evaluate what I thought I knew about such things as Science-Fiction.

I started reading SF by the truckload in the mid-nineties, taking the list of Hugo and Nebula-winning novels as my primary reading list.  Taking advantage of used-book sales and the accumulated mass of SF commentary then available, it’s natural that I regard the 1960s-1980s era of Science-Fiction as my own formative period.  An era that happens to match almost perfectly with Far Horizons.

But Far Horizons dates back to 1999.  One of the authors in the table of content has died recently, and many of the others have seen their relative profile within the genre fall precipitously in that they no longer command the same kind of attention they once did.  Meanwhile, the genre now looks very different from what it was in 1995 or 1999: media SF is more pervasive, video-games are narrowly trailing movies as a dominant vector for genre visuals, and print SF is now quite a bit more diverse than it used to be.  There are relatively fewer pure-SF readers, and even the dedicated ones now have trouble placing Heinlein, Niven and Sturgeon, just as I’m fuzzy on earlier SF writers such as Weinbaum, Nourse or Kuttner.

I’m not bemoaning the death of an era as much as I’m finally acknowledging that it’s happening, and trying to look forward.  SF-as-a-genre has died and been resurrected in radically different ways a couple of times in its history (from magazines to books, from paperbacks to hardcover bestsellers, and now from paper to electrons), and that’s OK.  I’m all for change if it means that I get to read great stories that wouldn’t have been welcomed in the old-school SF ghetto.  More diversity, more viewpoints, more takes on our possible futures?  Yes, please!

Heck, the amount of physical household space re-arranging that a newborn requires even had me chipping away at the certitude that well-stocked bookshelves are an unarguable boon.  I’m nearly convinced that I can enjoy ebooks without having to purchase a physical copy.  I suspect that the way I’m defining fixed spaces for my CD/DVD collections and then culling ruthlessly is a harbinger of things to come for my book collection.  Isn’t it easier to make a backup on separate drives than to move books from shelves to shelves as the collection expands?

As I focus on the health, safety and happiness of the cutest baby in the world (another declarative sentence; no argument tolerated) you can say that I’m looking forward to the next generation of readers in more ways than one.  I will eventually return to reading current SF as my backlog of unreviewable books gets exhausted and as I catch up on my accumulated sleep deficit, but I have a feeling that the pause will do me some good.  As with all genres that are in conversation with themselves, SF renews itself and a fundamental disservice that older fans may bring to the table is an obstinate inability to acknowledge the current state of the art.  Old-school SF as showcased by Far Horizons is still great fun to read and has provided happy memories to generations of readers, but it’s not the culmination of the genre, nor does it reflect the best of what’s now possible to do with the tools of the genre.  Rather than rant at the disappearance of the good old stuff, I choose to welcome the even-better new stuff.

A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin

A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Bantam Spectra, 2011, 1040 pages, C$38.00 hc, ISBN 978-0-553-80147-7

So, here we are.  After manfully resisting the impulse to start reading George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series before it was published in its entirety, the TV show made me break down and now I reap the consequences of my folly: I’m done reading the fifth volume, and now I have to wait for the rest of the series like so many other readers.  At the pace Martin is writing his thousand-page doorstoppers, the next volume isn’t expected until 2014 at the earliest, and the planned concluding volume of the series probably won’t hit shelves before the end of the decade.  So it goes; I’m joining the club of impatient Martin fans.

The wait is made even more maddening by the unusual structure of the series.  It started out as a trilogy and then escaped all control, growing into a pair of linked trilogies, then grew even more misshapen when the fourth volume was split up in two based on the geographical location of its characters.  A Dance with Dragons is the second half of this split, and it covers the characters missed by the fourth book A Feast for Crows until its last third, at which point the entire story once again starts moving forward in time.  Readers hoping for significant forward progress may want to temper their expectations, though, since this is really still the beginning of a new story arc: This fifth volume is so busy setting up its pieces that it practically forgets to deliver any payoffs.  The last third of A Dance with Dragons doesn’t really move the story forward in time as much as it sets up cliffhanger after cliffhanger, all leading to… the next volume in the series.  Which is at least a few years away.  But I repeat myself.

Fans of the series will, at least, get to spend some time with familiar characters.  Lovably modern Tyrion is finally back in-narrative after a sorely-missed absence in A Feast for Crows, and the adventures he gets into while exiled from Westeros are good for a few picaresque thrills.  Meanwhile, at the Wall, Jon Snow gets busy with the business of leading the Night’s Watch, preparing for winter while setting up defenses against the foreseen invaders and managing the influx of refugees clamoring for resources and protection.  Alas, A Dance with Dragon also goes back, at length, to dragon-queen Daenerys Targaryen, who has decided to stop traveling for a while and try to lead for a change.  It doesn’t go well, but the Mereen chapters of A Dance with Dragons have a bigger flaw: they’re remarkably repetitive, with Daenerys occasionally reverting back to love-struck teenage moping while the situation around her goes from bad to worse.  Even the convergence of plotlines and characters toward her doesn’t reach a meaningful conclusion in this volume, a long-promised battle being pushed into the next volume.  And that’s without mentioning another battle in a land far away, much-teased but not delivered.

At this point, not having any idea how this turns out, much of A Dance with Dragons is, as with A Feast for Crowd, just set-dressing.  Martin introduces a lot of new characters here, and their importance isn’t particularly clear.  Some of it feels arbitrary, as when another pretender to the Iron Throne is introduced without too much ceremony.  Some of it feels dull, as with the Iron Born racing from Pyke to Mereen.  Some of it feels pointless, as with the entire Quentyn Martell storyline.  None of those new characters can measure up to the ones introduced in the first three books and imprinted onto the readers.  Maybe it will all make sense with the added resonance of the next volume.  At this point, though, it’s hard to escape the suspicion that Martin has lost control of his series. 

At least the novel is more satisfying when it comes to its established characters.  Red Priestess Melissandre gets an intriguing passage told from her own point of view, whereas Arya features in a pitch-perfect chapter titled “The Blind Girl”.  Tyrion is as self-aware as ever, and despite some reprehensible acts at the end of A Storm of Swords, seems to be one of the few characters with a sense of humor about his own trials.  Everyone who went through A Feast for Crows hoping that paranoid sociopath Cercei would get some comeuppance will get their wish here, although in typical Martin fashion the punishment seems rather harsh, and leads to a closing passage with ominous overtones.  Still, her retribution is nothing compared to what happened to a much-hated character after his last appearance in A Clash of Kings: returning as a spectacularly damaged shadow of his own self, “Reek” shows how mean Martin can be to his characters, and how readers’ expectations about some characters can flip from one book to the other.  (Also see; Jamie Lannister)  Finally, the epilogue of the book marks the bloodthirsty return of a character who had disappeared almost completely after the third book, setting up bigger questions about true allegiances and what that means for the rest of the series. 

But, as tantalizing as those developments can be, it’s easy to feel as if the last two volumes have been a spectacularly overblown exercise in throat-clearing.  It’s not clear whether the relevant plotting in this huge split-up mess couldn’t have been condensed in a single snappier tome, or whether the incredible amount of detail in this series has grown too unmanageable to handle.  It’s all nice and well to feature dozens of protagonists, hundreds of secondary characters and somewhere around 1500 named characters spanning an entire world, but keeping up with all of these people takes time, and Martin is still adding more complexity to the mix.  His ultimate success will be judged after he delivers the ending of his saga; in the meantime, it’s not as if any fan of the series will skip a volume on their way to the conclusion.

A Dance with Dragons does at least feel like a step up from A Feast for Crows.  During the last third of the novel, as more and more plotlines were advanced forward, I even found myself getting back some of the pure reading joy I had last experienced in the latter half of A Storm of Swords.  That joy was muted when it became more obvious that this was just another round of cliffhanger-making in time for another long wait.  It’s a bit of a shame, from a reviewing perspective, that appreciation for A Dance with Dragons is so closely linked to unknown factors.  Maybe the conclusion will wrap it all brilliantly.  In the meantime, readers are left hoping that the next volume will step on the gas a little bit.

A Feast for Crows, George R.R. Martin

A Feast for Crows, George R.R. Martin

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Bantam Spectra, 2011 reprint of 2005 original, 1104 pages, $C10.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-553-58202-4

One of fiction’s most fundamental narrative engines is the balance between tension and release.  Typical fiction-writing advice is to send your characters up a tree and then throw rocks at them.  The more rocks you throw, the sweeter their success once they climb down the tree.  Authors spend most of their time setting up dramatic payoffs –the fun is in releasing all the tension the closer we are to the end of the story.

This ties in A Feast for Crows insofar as this novel is almost entirely pure buildup.  As fans of the A Song of Ice and Fire series know, Martin first planned on a trilogy.  Then the trilogy grew to a planned six books: two linked trilogies separated by a gap for five years in the internal chronology.  But life seldom goes according to plan, and that’s how Martin found himself with a fourth volume so big that it couldn’t fit between the covers of a single book.  Unusually, he split the book in two halves, following a different set of characters separated by geography.  (It helps when you’re writing about an imagined world so big that characters can go entire novels without meeting each other.)  A Feast for Crows is the first half, A Dance With Dragons following (six years later!) to complete the experiment.

The first discovery of A Feast for Crows is the realization that it’s meant to re-start the series with a chunk of new characters.  (This isn’t surprising given how many died in the third book.)  Alas, the first hundred pages of the novel is laborious, as the usual fatal prologue is followed by two chapters going off to the Iron Island and Dorne in order to open up new plotting avenues.  There’s a definite break in structural form as Martin titles chapters using mysterious titles rather than the names readers were used to see.  The three leading characters by number of chapters aren’t even from the Stark family: Cersei, Jaime and Brienne have much of the book to themselves, although that usually translates into interminable treks in a devastated post-War Westeros.

The title of the book hints at the gloominess of the setting (which turns into autumn as the foretold winter is coming), as the continent of Westeros wakes up from the ravages left by the War of the Five Kings.  Brienne and Jamie, in particular, each do their tour of the land, meeting ancillary characters while smelling the carrion.  Brienne remains herself, while Jamie continues his unlikely narrative redemption as one of the sanest characters left alive.  Meanwhile, the ten chapters given to his sister Cersei’s viewpoint do nothing to make her more likable: If Jamie got more likable as we got inside his head, Cersei gets progressively more despicable even as we understand her particular brand of madness.  Her inner monologue is that of a paranoid sociopath, and reading her chapters are like being stuck in a very unpleasant mind that keeps plotting (not very well) against a plethora of enemies both real and imagined.  Additionally, we do get a handful of interesting chapters from the perspective of the two Stark daughters, another not-so-interesting handful of chapters from Dorne and the Iron Island, engaging episodes of Samwell Tarly’s fearless journey to Oldtown and a few more new characters that, frankly, don’t do much to earn the reader’s affection.

The problem with A Feast for Crows, however, isn’t as much with the characters as with the fact that little actually happens.  As the opening of this review suggests, Martin is setting up a new tetralogy’s worth of narrative threads, and with a series of this bulk, it takes time to put everything into place –so much time, in fact, that we can expect A Dance with Dragons to be more of the same.  (Late in this book, Petyr Baelish has a few lines about “wishing he had four or five more years” to set up his plans that hilariously reflect Martin’s own experience with the series.)

This translates into a curious reading experience: While the main attraction of the series has been its deep immersive nature alongside a cast of thousands (no, really), it’s not designed for fast reading.  A Feast for Crows is even slower than any of the previous three books, and the conscious absence of half the characters only reinforces that this book feels like imposed exercise before getting to the good stuff.

Not that there aren’t any rewards in here.  In addition to the numerous chapters of palace intrigue in King’s Landing there are plenty of rewards in-between the cracks of the novel: Alert readers will notice a short homage to “Archmaester Rigney”’s Wheel of Time series; and those who, ahem, go look up online concordances will find a lot of fascinating back-stories, some of them even acting as possible epilogues to striking characters from earlier books.  Martin appears to continue his heartless dismissal of beloved characters with a few minor deaths and what looks like a big cliff-hanger.

Still, A Feast for Crows isn’t nearly as satisfying as the previous books in the series.  The events on the Iron Islands are dull (the ironmen are not sympathetic characters to begin with, and nothing that happens in this novel makes them look any better), while the Dorne chapters don’t seem to amount to much.  Much of the novel is spent setting up new elements, or looking at the wreckage left by the previous books and saying “well, that happened.”  Meanwhile, nothing (much) is happening, even though some of the latter chapters hold some promise.

Fans of the series will read the novel anyway: it’s an essential bridge between A Storm of Swords and whatever form the continuation of the series will take.  It keeps up A Song of Fire and Ice’s immersive sense of detail, but it may also present a lesson of sorts to writers embarking on very long series –it’s not hard to feel as if Martin’s control over the story has slipped away from him, and that the book is a lengthy attempt to start wrestling it back.  Ultimately, we will have to wait for the entire series to be completed before passing final judgment on its installments.

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Scholastic, 2008, 384 pages, C$19.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-439-02348-1

So, what are the kids up to these days?  From the best-seller lists and the mass marketing push accompanying the release of The Hunger Games movie, it’s obvious that they’ve moved on from Twilight and Harry Potter onto Katniss, bow-wielding heroine of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy.  Tell no one, but I enjoy reading Young Adult books to find out where the zeitgeist’s at: They’re usually good books, don’t take too much time to read and they give conversational material in case I unaccountably find myself hosting a middle-school party.

So it is that The Hunger Games (first volume of a trilogy by the same name) introduces the world of Panem, a post-apocalyptic North America that has the luxury of dispensing with every familiar social institution in order to set up a tyrannical regime in which the twelve districts of the empire are kept in their place through a cunning piece of social engineering: Annual survival games in which the districts each send two teenage participants.  The last of the 24 contestants left standing wins a title, and the district gets extra food rations. 

As a premise, it’s far-fetched enough to make SF readers reach for their “one big deviation from reality is allowed” suspension-of-disbelief card.  There’s practically no precedent in American culture for this kind of deadly contest (no, reality TV doesn’t count), and you’d think that sacrificing 23 teenagers per year would stoke populist anger rather than put it in its place, but hey –one big deviation from reality is allowed.  This is a YA novel and its whole point is to pit teenagers against each other in a fight to the finish, no matter how thin the rationale leading to this point can be.

Our heroine to guide us through the inevitable rebellion (but not yet, not in this first volume) is Katniss, a bright sixteen-year-old girl from poor District 12, the coal-mining Appalachian backwater of Panem.  As the novel begins, Katniss is struggling to put food on the table for the ineffective mom and younger sister.  Fortunately, she’s handy with a bow and isn’t afraid to venture beyond the fences of District 12 to hunt down wild game.  Otherwise, she’s got an ongoing not-quite-romance with neighborhood boy Gale and seems headed for a quiet life of eternal desperation.  But then… the games come calling and her sister is picked as a District 12 representative.  Fortunately, she can volunteer to take her place, and that’s how she ends up on a train to Capitol, stuck alongside a boy with a crush on her (Peeta) and a boozy mentor who hates them both.

Things get more interesting during the lead-up to the Games, as Katniss and Peeta are groomed like reality TV contestants, a romantic storyline manufactured out of thin air to make them seem more compelling to the audience.  We get to see them undergo wardrobe design, physical training, TV interviews… and a few political games alongside hints of Capitol’s terrifying power.  Little of the background details sustain any kind of scrutiny: there’s enough advanced technology around to fix the problems that the Districts seem to be having, suggesting either a deliberately cruel society, or more plausibly incompetent world-building.

Fortunately, there’s more to The Hunger Games than cardboard-thin landscapes: Katniss’s first-person narration is a no-nonsense blend of clipped sentences, tangled emotions, descriptive statements and overall skepticism when confronted to the wonders of Capitol.  She’s not buying into the mystique, but there’s little choice than to comply in order to get to the games.  She doesn’t have any illusions regarding her chances for survival, especially when confronted to the contestants from the richer districts that actually have training programs for Game contestants.  It doesn’t really help that Peeta reveals his crush on Katniss, and that their mentor seems particularly ineffective.

Soon enough, though, the action moves into the gigantic arena of the Games, where fairness is just a concept to be discarded by the game-masters, and where some contestants band together to hunt down their isolated counterparts.  The book isn’t particularly sentimental about the violence perpetrated by the contestants (there’s even a mention of a particularly psychotic past contestant), all the best to raise the stakes against Katniss.  Much of the action takes place in a wilderness fortunately similar to District 12’s forested hills, and Katniss soon finds herself in the last half, then the last quarter of the surviving contestants.  There’s no doubt that she’ll survive, but it’s all in the way she defeats her opponents… some of them outside the arena.

The Hunger Games survives its unconvincing premise thanks to a blend of effective prose, lively plotting and an admirable heroine.  Katniss is both endearing and credible: her abilities are impressive, but she has the self-doubts, indecision and cynicism of a teenage girl.  She’s not a victim, not a prize to be claimed by someone else and actively resents the “star-crossed couple” narrative imposed by the game organizers on Peeta and herself.  Even by the end of the novel, it’s not too clear whether her emotions about Peeta have settled in a definitive form.  It’s not surprising if the book has found a large audience in its target market, especially with young women.

Given this, the success of The Hunger Games with its teen audience has a comforting lining to the edge of its violent premise.  It’s an engaging read, and while it’s hardly surprising, it does wrap up nicely and it sets up its two sequels effectively.  Better yet, it gives some compelling reason to read those two sequels… and given that a lot of box sets of the series are being sold in the wake of the film version’s success, that’s a really good thing.