Book Review

  • Big Red: The Three-Month Voyage of a Trident Nuclear Submarine, Douglas C. Waller

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Torch, 2001, 448 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-82078-1

    A few years ago, this book would have been impossible. Tensions ran high between the United States and Russia and the lurking presences of the nuclear-armed Trident submarines was an integral part of the United States’ nuclear deterrent. Even if Russia could target (and presumably destroy) all of the United States’ known terrestrial nuclear sites, it simply could not account for the submarine fleet. Automatically assured mutual destruction. Stalemate even before the game had been played.

    In such a context, releasing even a shred of information on the inner workings of a Trident submarine would have been foolhardy. That’s why the Trident program remained shrouded in mystery even as other areas of America’s military capabilities were endlessly hyped, such as in George C. Wilson’s Super Carrier —a book which meticulously described the latest and greatest Lincoln-class nuclear aircraft carriers.

    But things have changed, and even though several navies still maintain a submarine fleet, their capabilities remain ridiculous when compared to the American underwater might. As the back jacket suggests, the 18,500-ton, $1.8 billion Trident submarines are “taller than the Washington Monument and wider than a three-lane highway”. Oh, and they carries enough nuclear weaponry to glassify whole countries, if the American political leadership so chooses. (Meanwhile, Canada has problems ensuring hull integrity for the four used British-built submarines it just purchased.)

    In this context, explaining the inner workings of a Trident submarine serves two purpose: First, terrify any county even dreaming of going toe-to-toe with the Americans. There’s a good reason why fifty cents out of every defence dollar spent in the world today is American; maintaining even one of those submarines, let alone building it, would tax the capabilities of almost any other nation on Planet Earth. Second, an exposé of the Trident program might just ensure that such weapons remain in service at a moment where serious questions are asked regarding the need for an underwater deterrent.

    Certainly, few are going to remain unconvinced of the impressive professionalism of an elite Trident crew after reading this tell-all description of a typical Trident voyage about the USS Nebraska. Correspondent Waller takes us inside almost all areas of the ship, from the bridge to the trash disposal area, from the mess to the chambers in which the nuclear missiles are stored. Even in peacetime, don’t think that deployment are easy for the crew; it’s drills, drills, drills all the time, and the first few days of operation end up being mostly sleepless ones.

    Waller’s style is brisk, to the point and filled with fascinating details. It’s a telling comment than to point out that the most mundane elements of underwater life (food, entertainment, worship) are described in as many fascinating details as the more exciting trials, such as hostage-taking training scenarios, a description of the nuclear firing sequence and simulated war-games. A lot of attention is also paid to the men manning the machines, as dozen of sailors are interviewed and invited to discuss the paths they followed in order to serve aboard the USS Nebraska.

    All in all, Big Red will doubtlessly appeal to military buffs, engineering geeks, as well as anyone with a deep interest in one of the most secretive areas of the American military forces. The depth of reporting is thorough enough that the book will doubtlessly act a primary source for countless techno-thriller writers in years to come. In the meantime, Big Red truly stays the definitive layman’s text on Trident.

  • Fire, Sebastian Junger

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Morrow, 2001, 224 pages, C$35.99 hc, ISBN 0-393-01046-5

    It used to be a fashionable idea to think that the world was a safe place.

    We know better now, but the nineteen-nineties were seen by many (North-)Americans as an age where nothing serious was going on. And yet, you didn’t have to look far to see hot spots all over the world. Forest fires in the forests of North America. Tensions in Kashmir and Cyprus. Civil wars in Africa, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe… and those are merely the trouble spots covered by Sebastian Junger in his first non-fiction collection, Fire.

    It happens all the time in Science Fiction: a solid but underrated writer wins raves and awards with his latest novel. Suddenly, a collection of his/her short fiction is published after years of unsuccessful attempts (because they’re usually regarded as being commercially risky). As it turns out, success breeds the same ideas everywhere, so it’s not particularly surprising to see the success of Junger’s The Perfect Storm breed a market for a collection of his magazine articles. Fire brings together ten articles from 1992 to 2001, spanning the globe in an attempt to explain danger to comfortable land-lubbers like us.

    The book might as well have been titled Risk, because all of the articles involve men and situation that could have dire consequences. Only the first two scorching articles, about forest firefighters, truly reflect the title of the book.

    After that, well, it gets more dangerous. After a breather in which Junger describes the hair-raising job of “the last living harpooner” (there are plenty of good reasons why they’re extinct), we move in more disturbing territory. “Escape From Kashmir” describes one of the many consequences of a dirty little conflict between India and Pakistan, the kidnapping of a group of Western tourists, most of whom simply disappeared without a trace. One of them managed to escape from his captors, and the article is his story.

    From there, we go to to Kosovo for the first time (“Kosovo’s Valley of Death”), in a war piece that seems almost too shy to report on what is happening. (This piece is markedly more recent -1998- than the previous ones. All subsequent pieces were written between 1999 and 2001, signalling Junger’s shift in the major reporting leagues.) Then it’s off to Cyprus, torn between Greek and Turkish enclaves. Here, Junger (from the Greek side) shares reporting duties with Scott Anderson (on the other). Their joint “dispatches from a dead war” are a fascinating examination of a difficult issues, with a surprising conclusion.

    “Colter’s Way” is, initially, a historical account of a man thriving on the edge of danger, but it also serves as a springboard to the examination of modern life and self-induced risk. (resemblances between this subject and the book itself aren’t totally coincidental) Nice, but nothing compared to “The Forensics of Death”, which uses the Kosovo civil war as a way to talk about international war justice and the issues associated with it. “The Terror of Sierra Leone” could be an ideal background piece for a modern thriller, mixing diamond lore, an African civil war, private security firms and much more. The volume concludes with “The Lion in Winter”, the portrait of Ahmed Massoud, a reluctant Afghani revolutionary fighting against the Taliban. (You might remember his name; he was killed during by al-Quaeda operatives in September 2001, a fact that adds a tragic dimension to the piece.)

    All is described in Junger’s descriptive prose, with appropriate explanatory passages that give us a better idea of what it all truly means. Junger’s eye for detail is stupefying, and almost every page of this book contains one or two new thing you didn’t know about. Though the book could benefit from photographic material, this is nothing to be sneered at. A superior journalism book, telling us more about our dangerous world as it really is.

  • Little Green Men, Christopher Buckley

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Random House, 1999, 300 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-679-45293-1

    I remember showing the bright-yellow jacket of this book to a colleague, who then asked the obvious question: “Are there any Little Green Men in it?” My first answer was “Well, with a title like this…”, but as it turns out, my colleague’s question was absolutely appropriate. Little Green Men is a rarity, a comedic thriller about UFOs that should satisfy both believers and sceptics alike. It also helps that for a humorous story of political intrigue, it’s about as non-partisan as it’s possible to be these days in the United States.

    Starring an unlikely protagonist named John Oliver Banion, Little Green Men is the story of a Washington talk-show host who is suddenly abducted by UFO occupants. A man of considerable intellect and reason, Banion has trouble coming to grip with his predicament. That is, until he’s abducted again. After that, he simply decides to become a crusader for all UFOlogists, with predictable results: His talk show is yanked off the air, Majestic-12 gets involved, his family and friends desert him and he becomes the coqueluche of the vast fringe-wing conspiracy. But what he’ll discover will defy both his imagination and yours… and spin wildly out of control as he finds himself with just a little bit too much power.

    I should probably avoid any further spoilers, because the pleasure of Little Green Men is how it twists the obvious developments and develops the obvious twists. As a confirmed sceptic regarding this whole UFO business, I approached the novel with guarded expectations, but what I got was considerably more interesting than what I first expected. It’s a remarkably clever little book, exploiting conspiracy hysteria in a fascinating fashion. Buckley Does Not Believe, and this detachment allows him to have a lot of fun with the material. (There are footnotes)

    Purists should note, however, that even though this is billed as a novel of political humour, there isn’t much in way of belly-laughs in the book. They’re scattered here and there, but for the most part, Buckley sticks to reasonable just-this-side-of-reality plot developments, avoiding obvious burlesque unless absolutely necessary. But to judge this novel on the number of laugh somehow misses the point, especially when it’s hard to wipe a sustained grin off our face as we read the novel. (Given the considerable sustained appeal of the prose, be prepared to grin from beginning to end.)

    Another note worth pondering: While you may get hints of known figures in the quick character sketches, don’t assume that Little Green Men has any link to pre-1999 political figures. In the first few pages, we learn that Saddam Hussein has converted to Catholicism, Robert McNamara was “addicted to mind-altering hair-restorative drugs the whole time he was escalating the war in Vietnam” [P.18], Israel annexed Jordan based on a new translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and that our protagonist once co-authored a congressional committee report that “stuck a well-balanced tone between righteous indignation and cautious reform, between those who though that the United States had no business trying to poison Canadian prime ministers and those who, while disapproving of this particular instance, felt that the United States ought to reserve the right to dispatch troublesome Canadian PMs in the future, should circumstances warrant.” [P.16] In short, any resemblance between this reality and our is, hopefully, entirely coincidental. This lack of adherence to acknowledged reality is one of the elements making Little Green Men fun reading for conservatives and liberals alike.

    The evolution of this protagonist from a righteous bastard to a definitely more sympathetic hero is one of the novel’s chief delights, but hardly the only one. I’d end up recommending Little Green Men to just about everyone. Sagaciously plotted, deliciously-written and executed with more than a twinkle of amusement, it doesn’t need much more to get my recommendation. If you think that X-Files-inspired rants and government conspiracies have evolved in a less-than-amusing direction lately, well, this is the book for you.

  • Echoes of Earth, Sean Williams & Shane Dix

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2002, 413 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-00892-5

    All right, Science Fiction fans: Your wait is over. If you’ve been scouring bookstores and libraries for the next Big-SF adventure, this is it: Echoes of Earth, a spectacular, large-scale future tale with plenty of guts and a willingness to follow up on initial promises.

    Admittedly, it doesn’t start all that strongly: In this imagined future, Earth has decided to explore the stars by proxy: Volunteers had their personalities scanned, copied and digitally sent to nearby stars inside an automated craft. (Shades of Greg Egan’s Diaspora, proving how the genre is evolving away from outdated assumptions.) There aren’t enough bodies for everyone, so personalities are downloaded in generic android bodies, ready to explore their destinations whenever they’re there. As the novel begins, our protagonist (an “engram” named Peter Alander, who nearly underwent a complete nervous breakdown upon arrival) is taking a bath.

    Of course, there’s more. Somehow, a mechanism is activated on the planet they’re exploring, and out of nowhere, massive structures start to grow from the ground up, eventually forming -in a matter of hours!- not only a series of orbital towers, but an orbital ring around the planet. Investigating the event, our protagonist is blessed with “gifts”—automated, quasi-miraculous systems and equipment left behind by an alien race.

    But wait! There’s even more! Peter quickly discovers that one of the gifts bestowed by the aliens is a faster-than-light ship. When the exploration team starts discussing what to do with that particular gadget, an automated “mole” buried deep within one of the personalities aboard the exploration ship is activated and takes control of the expedition, shutting down the rest of the crew to ensure compliance with mission directives. After some unpleasantness, Peter leaves for Earth—and discovers something very very shocking. Fortunately, an old acquaintance which has survived it all is (reluctantly) ready to help him absorb the new paradigm.

    Echoes of Earth really hits its stride in this second half. The high-speed acceleration of Earth’s technological progress has radically changed the solar system, leaving deep scars. This kind of free-wheeling extrapolation is seldom seen in SF, and always welcome. The future imagined by Williams and Dix combines elements from other previous SF works, give them a spin and plays along with the results. It also helps that the second part of the novel is told from the perspective of a different character, giving an interesting take on the first protagonist, a deeply flawed personality that purposefully doesn’t include the capability to see anything wrong with itself.

    It all accelerates in a scenario that would be highly unpleasant if it wasn’t told with the energy it displays. Suffice to say that if you like your SF big and spectacular, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more spectacular canvas than Echoes of Earth this year.

    The only quibble I had with the novel -save for the unspectacular opening- was the ending, which seemed to wrap quickly and leave a lot of loose ends. I still might have been satisfied if it had stopped there, but it turns out that a second volume, Orphans of Earth, has appeared in bookstores as I was reading what is the first volume of a new series. Completists and singleton-lovers might want to temper their enthusiasm in consequence. Other might as well start reading as quickly as possible.

    [July 2004: My enthusiasm hasn’t survived the reading of the last two tomes of the trilogy. While there’s a decent bag of cool stuff in these three books, it’s spread way too thin and never equals Echoes of Earth‘s portrait of the post-Spike solar system. The trilogy’s biggest problem, however, is that it’s all too easy not to care about the aliens and engrams characters. It certainly doesn’t help that Heirs of Earth, the conclusion of the series, purposefully avoids giving answers as to What Just Happened. Some scenes are spectacular (including an exploding sun), some ideas are nifty, some twists are intriguing, but the whole thing barely holds together. What was intriguing quickly became ordinary. It’s no wonder if it was published as a series of paperback originals.]

  • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 2000, 297 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-7434-5596-7

    If you are a Stephen King fan, there is only one thing you need to know about this book: It’s essential reading. Go get it. Now. Shoo. Come back whenever you’ve read it. I’ll wait. It won’t take a long time, trust me.

    For everyone else, it’s important to place On Writing in the proper context of Stephen King’s life and times. In King’s nearly thirty-year-long career (Carrie was published in 1974, though King wouldn’t become a mega-selling author until after the de Palma and Kubrick adaptations of, respectively, Carrie and The Shining in the late seventies.) King has never been shy about either talking about himself or the craft of writing. (For proof, see, oh, the “Constant Reader” forewords, interviews and non-fiction pieces in places like Writer’s Digest.)

    But until now, though he had published non-fiction before (his book-length exploration of horror fiction, Danse Macabre, is a must-read for every serious student of the form), King had never tackled a sustained autobiography, nor a lengthier piece on the act of writing.

    Well, no more. On Writing is on shelves, and it’s definitely worth reading. Part confessional autobiography, part inspirational advice, part reflection on the techniques of writing, On Writing is of most interest to existing fans of King’s work, but should reach a much larger public by sheer virtue of honesty. The big surprise, in light of the massive length of some of King’s novel, is how On Writing comes out as an easy, short and snappy book, just long enough to leave us wanting more.

    The first section is a collection of thirty-eight memories, anecdotes and vignettes of his life, from the infant Stephen King to the seasoned best-selling writer. Though I’m no literary scholar, the level of honesty exhibited here by King is commendable. From an unremarkable childhood in a single-parent family to his first forays in writing, King gives us a glimpse in the formative experiences of the writer he has become. Future King specialists will read this in awe; the rest of us won’t be any less fascinated. King occasionally shocks (On his addiction problems: “I wrote The Tommyknockers, often working until midnight with my heart running at a hundred and thirty beats a minute and cotton swabs stuck up my nose to stem the coke-induced bleeding.” [P.90]) but follows up with some good advice (in this case, that the myth of the gloriously addicted writer is a false and dangerous one; “Hemingway and Fitzgerald drank because that’s what alkies are wired to do.” [P.92]) King also describes the fascinating process by which several of his best-known books were written. He doesn’t even remember writing entire novels, but what he does remember is sobering.

    He follows this confessional with writing advice that occasionally takes up more of an inspirational quality than a strictly didactic one. It also helps that this is a book about writing from someone who knows how to write and loves doing it. A random selection of King’s fiction shows an uncommon fascination with writers and the writing process (One title: Misery), and this fascination is entirely organic to his own writing process. It would be hard to imagine his best-selling colleagues (say, Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele) being able and willing to write a similar book. (Audaciously enough, King also takes the time to criticize some of his colleagues)

    The book closes on more autobiographical material, this time a lengthy description of his 1999 accident (in which he was hit by a drunk driver) and his rehabilitation. Seasoned horror readers might find themselves cringing with sympathy as King spares no details in recounting how difficult the experience was. At this stage in the book, it comes as no surprise if starting to write again has been a key element in his recovery.

    At this stage of his career, it’s widely acknowledged that King is well on his way to become the representative popular writer of the late twentieth century. On Writing shows the qualities that will make him a Dickens for our time in years to come. His dedication to craft and his knowledge of what he is doing are unequalled in the best-selling arena. There are undoubtedly better writers out there, but few have been able to marry popular success with literary quality like he has been able to do. We are lucky that he’s been so willing to set down his advice and his memories in such a book.

  • Field of Dishonor (Honor Harrington 4), David Weber

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1994, 367 pages, C$7.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-87624-4

    Well, that’s a pleasant surprise.

    After bemoaning the lack of variety in Honor Harrington’s first three adventures, here’s a fourth volume that delivers exactly what I’ve been asking for. No space battles for Honor this time around; in fact, precious little military action is featured in Field of Dishonor. As the title may suggest, this time the action pretty much all takes place in the political arena, with consequences far more affecting than any of Harrington’s military engagements.

    The novel starts scant moments after A Short Victorious War, as Pavel Young’s (grrr!) cowardly behaviour during the third novel’s final engagement is examined by military analysts. The recommendation is swift to come; Young should be court-martialed for his actions, a process that may carry with it the death penalty for treason. All is not so simple, however, as the case becomes a battleground for the political factions in the Manticoran parliament. Conservatives are quick to defend Young, which they see as an unfairly persecuted member of one of the most honoured families in the kingdom. Many of the other factions rally around Honor… well, except for those who still remember her punching one of theirs in the face during the events described in The Honor of the Queen. It’s a complex issue and it quickly gets even more complicated when the court-martial is decided by a jury with opposing -but definite- views.

    All of the above takes place before the novel is halfway through. What follows is, by a significant margin, the most interesting section of the Honor Harrington novels yet. Matter of revenge and retribution are exacted left and right, with Harrington in the middle of the conflict. Pretty much all of the series becomes important in many subtle ways; no details are forgotten as Harrington becomes an unfortunate media darling. Nearly all characters are involved in the story. The final chapters are a heck of a lot of fun as, finally, we get something else than a Big Space Battle as a climax. Harrington’s involvement is also deeply personal, going beyond simply playing a lethal video-game combat really well with occasional casualties. This fight has no intermediaries.

    In short, it is by side-stepping the usual military SF dramatic arc and embracing a character-driven plot that Field of Dishonor becomes the best entry (so far, so far!) in the series. Real character development takes place, with real issues affecting the characters. Though some of it may be predictable (it’s not as if we couldn’t see part of the story coming, even from the previous volume), it’s very well-done and carries with it a great sense of urgency. It’s also deeply satisfying in a very unconventional way. For maybe the first time, the entire series truly pays off. While a dramatic loop of some kind has been closed, it’s clear that this is far from being an ending.

    (I’m not too pleased, however, with the off-screen death of one major character, whose demise is simply reported in the next chapter without any attempt at showing what happened. Kind of a missed opportunity for a good dramatic scene, if you ask me.)

    Field of Dishonor might be a lot of things, but it’s -perhaps most importantly- a shot in the arm for the entire Honor Harrington saga. Wisely concentrating, maybe even only for one novel, on the characters rather than the hardware and the strategies, Weber has ensured a renewed interest in the adventures of his heroine. Despite the sombre tone of the last few pages, there is no doubt that Harrington will be back in action, and soon. Next volume, please!

  • Prey, Michael Crichton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 2002, 367 pages, C$39.95 hc, ISBN 0-00-200554-9

    Experienced genre critics just looove to review Michael Crichton’s novels. Rather than spend any time finding interesting things to say about the book’s strengths and weaknesses, it all too easy to dust off the old list of Crichton’s failings (provided free of charge to anyone who subscribes to the shadowy Criticaluminati! organization) and simply riff on that.

    But that would be lazy. And whereas laziness has always been a hallmark of the reviews on this site, I have already discussed Crichton’s motifs several times before. It’s not as if anyone cares, but I thought I’d do something different this time around.

    It’s not as if I wasn’t tempted, though. Prey is just begging to receive the full Crichton Treatment. Once again, a promising new technology (nanotechnology, to be precise) is meticulously described in luscious detail, and then exploited for cheap thrills as everything goes wrong, protagonists are threatened and the survival of the world is at stake. Bibliography provided. Added bonus reactionary points are given since the the evil characters are from a corporation and the wife of the narrator is a baaad mother. Boo!, said the peanut gallery.

    But let’s tackle something else. Crichton’s unfailingly clear writing style, for instance. (Hey, when so many of your novels have been adapted by Hollywood, it’s tempting to deliver something that can be transformed in a screenplay in a few hours) Told from a first-person viewpoint (which I believe to be a first in the Crichton oeuvre), Prey flows along with nary a slowdown. It’s only after reading the first hundred pages that we come to realize how much hasn’t happened by then. (If you’ve been paying attention, though, you’re already far ahead of the protagonist. Moody personality? Ah-hah! Weird dream? Ah-hah! Disintegrating electronics? Ah-hah! The clues accumulate… even though a few of them are ultimately revealed to be meaningless even at the end.) The novel quickly rushes to its second act, a little marvel of quirky suspense that, for a while, almost makes us feel as if this is the best thing Crichton has written since Jurassic Park. This impression passes as soon as we move in the third act, a silly possession thriller that can’t be bothered to be any more original than a catwalk fight. (Though it features a nifty sequence inside an MRI machine)

    Through it all, Crichton’s sceptical attitude (once again) makes a perfect foil for the subject he tackles in Prey. The dangers offered by nanotechnology, once we put aside the unconvincing features of the “evil bugs” in the novel, are obvious. Crichton’s well-worn contention that unrestrained technological development can be devastating seems obvious in light of the craziness of the late-nineties “Internet Gold Rush”. At least there wasn’t any possibility of destroying the world through the Internet. Things may very well be different with nanotech.

    Still, one wonders why it’s so hard for Crichton to adopt a more balanced approach. Why do all of his novels have to be cautionary tales? Why can’t he present a more balanced approach, once in a while? Granted, his shtick is well-worn and has proven to be rather effective as a tool to get on best-seller lists. But as a true novelist, however, Crichton doesn’t inspire a lot of faith in his range.

    But that’s sliding a little bit too close to the standard rant about Crichton. Truth be told, Prey‘s subject matter is more immediate than Timeline, and if details of the execution are troubling (including some of the technical details for knowledgeable readers), the overall readability of the book does a lot to distract anyone from being too critical. Flaws and all, Crichton remains of of the most reliable suspense novelists around, and Prey merely confirms it.

  • Rising Phoenix, Kyle Mills

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Choice, 1997, 486 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-101249-1

    I recall being rather impressed by Kyle Mills’ second novel, Storming Heaven, a fun thriller animated by a vast conspiracy, a chilling sect inspired by Scientology and good-old-fashioned police work. It wasn’t particularly original, but it was very well executed and featured an interesting protagonist in the character of maverick FBI agent Mark Beamon.

    For the same reason, I was hesitant to pick up Rising Phoenix, Mills’ first novel also featuring Mark Beamon. Had the second volume featured enough spoilers to ruin the first novel? Would this first effort measure up to the standards of the second book?

    As is turns out, Rising Phoenix is a different book. First, it’s not spoiled by Storming Heaven. The two stories are very distinct, and it’s almost an accident if they both happen to have the same protagonist. Certainly, no major events or secondary characters cross over in more than a passing mention.

    Furthermore, whereas Storming Heaven had a run-of-the-mill concept helped by a great execution, Rising Phoenix is closer to an original premise given life in a very ordinary fashion.

    It starts as a nationally-renowned preacher gives carte blanche to an assistant (as it turns out, a sadistic ex-policeman with a record of excessive brutality) to solve, once and for all, the drug problem in America. The operative then goes and executes a plan near and dear to his heart; poison a substantial fraction of the Columbian drug supply with a deadly spore. One whiff of the poisoned material and the poison starts to act. Two weeks later—goodbye, drug user.

    Terrorism by any other name, this action quickly strikes fear among the drug-using population of the United States. Given the latency period, it’s nearly impossible to quickly detect the contaminated shipments. Thousands quit their nefarious habit, drug prices shoot through the roof, Columbian drug lords go nuts and several citizen applaud the gesture. This uncommon ambiguity is further heightened when the preacher has remorse, drug lords dispatch their operatives to catch the poisoner and the government has to do something to stop the health catastrophe.

    It’s up to special agent Mark Beamon to investigate the case and catch the culprit, a culprit who turns out to be an old acquaintance of his. And this is where Rising Phoenix takes a departure from a fantastic premise over to a hum-drum thriller. It’s almost as if Mills didn’t know what to do with his initial concept and had to stick in a hero to bring back law and order. It’s not as interesting as seeing an unconventional plan do some ambiguous good, mind you. A bit like Vince Flynn’s Term Limit, it’s as if the authors had to de-fang their initial idea with something closer to what the general public is able to stomach.

    Oh well. At least the novel is competently written. While the concept of “poisoning America’s drug supply” may sound dubious at first, Mills makes it uncommonly believable. He also paints his characters with some skill, though the image of the antagonist is muddled though inconsistent heroics. The other letdown is the way in which an interesting political debate is toned down in favour of more straight-up police thriller mechanics. Then again, this is Mills’ first novel: some flaws are to be expected, such as the unfortunately confusing action scenes and the imperfect characterization.

    But what Rising Phoenix clearly does establish is Kyle Mills’ potential as a thriller writer to watch. While both of the novels I’ve read from him so far have had flaws, they still remain good examples of capable genre novels. Worth a look.

  • Fatal Voyage, Kathy Reichs

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 2001, 420 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-02837-5

    I have made no secret, in past reviews of Kathy Reichs’ novels, of my decidedly mixed feelings about her literary output. While I’m more than happy enough to read an American writer setting stories in my quasi-native Quebec, I was rather less enthusiastic about the lack of originality and the awful contrivances of her plotting. Alas, Fatal Voyage, keeps most of the problems and few of the qualities of Reichs’ previous books.

    This time, rather than steal the plot of her novel from French-Canadian headlines, Reichs is a touch more original by using a plane crash as her initial situation. As the novel opens, protagonist Tempe Brennan is in the middle of a debris field, looking dispassionately at body parts strewn across the North Carolinian landscape. As an official investigator for a disaster response team, her efforts to understand what has just happened go awry when an unidentified body part complicates her investigation. The item doesn’t fit anything else on the plane; where has it come from, then?

    If you’re familiar with the old joke about an airplane crashing in a graveyard, you’re already far ahead of Reichs’ protagonist. Furthermore, chances are that you’re already half annoyed by this plot cheat. But don’t be too exasperated yet; in typical Reichs fashion, it quickly becomes apparent that her daughter might have been on the plane and that the partner of her good friend Andrew Ryan was also on the plane, escorting a dangerous criminal. Anyone else would say that these are two coincidences too many, but this kind of lazy plotting is, in fact, routine for this author. But wait; there are other howlers later in the book.

    The biggest plot cheat is that the plane crash ends up being a sideshow to another, rather less interesting story about a decades-old mystery, a secret society and a bunch of killers hiding corpses in the North Carolinian wilderness. Add to that a rather dull romance and this is one Fatal Voyage where we’re constantly asking ourselves if we’re there yet. As vicious hillbillies threaten Brennan with all sort of bad things, it struck this reviewer that her untimely disappearance wouldn’t be an entirely unwelcome event.

    Even the usual reliable standby of the series -the Quebec setting-, disappeared almost entirely from this particular novel. Save for a brief scene, Brennan spends the whole novel in Carolina, with only the (coincidental) presence of Sûreté du Québec policeman Andrew Ryan as a reminder of the usual setting of the series.

    What’s worse is that the novel is dull. Fatally dull. The age-old conspiracies are underwhelming, the hillbillies don’t amount to much of a menace and there’s a definite sensation of having seen this before.

    In fact, without being so nasty as to accuse Reichs of outright plagiarism, the opening few scenes of Fatal Voyage are very, very similar to James Thayer’s Terminal Event, which also featured an investigator taking a look at a crash scene. The various possibilities about what brought down the plane are also similar; missile, organized crime bomb, political terrorism, etc. While it’s entirely possible that Reichs has read Terminal Event before working on Fatal Voyage, I’d rather blame similar plotting than idea stealing (there are only so many ways a plane can be brought down, after all). Plus, the novels evolve in entirely different directions. Weirder synchronicity has happened before.

    But it doesn’t change my perception of Fatal Voyage. Filled with implausible happenstance, kept away from distinctive Quebec and dull above everything else, Fatal Voyage is best avoided. For that matter, I’m starting to think that Reichs’ oeuvre itself is best avoided. It’s not as if there aren’t better writers out there.

  • Goliath, Steve Alten

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 2002, 416 pages, C$35.95 hc, ISBN 0-765-30064-8

    (Read in French as Goliath, translated by Marie Claude Elsen)

    It must be a rotten time, in these early years of the twenty-first century, to be a techno-thriller writer. For decades, the Cold War provided a stable framework in which to set tales of global domination and intrepid freedom-loving heroes. Then, during the nineties, relative global quiet allowed them a few good years of stability battling drug cartels and (then) fictional terrorists. But even as the Bush administration seems to be engaged in a long campaign to secure everyone’s New American Century (whether they want it or not), techno-thrillers are being strangled by the incertitude. It’s no longer possible for anyone to depend on geo-political alliances that will last more than a few years, or long enough for the novel to make it to paperback. Anything can happen, and since November 2000, it seems as if just about anything has.

    No longer is it possible to write an explicitly post-September-11 novel taking place in 2009 in which Baghdad is destroyed by American nuclear weapons. Or rather; it might have seemed like a good idea when I started reading Steve Alten’s Goliath, but it didn’t seem nearly so amusing by the time I finished it, as real bombs were falling over the real city, killing real people despite unreal news reports. But let’s not turn this into (yet another) dreary case of literary criticism turned political diatribe Truth is, there’s a lot to like and to skewer in Goliath, even when you shove aside the politics and the economics of starving techno-thriller writers.

    Take, for instance, how Alten stuffs his usual motifs in his latest novel. It’s not enough for “Goliath” to be an incredibly powerful submarine being controlled by a renegade scientist and a pre-sentient artificial intelligence. The submarine is shaped like a Manta Ray, and its smaller submarine drones look like… sharks. After Alten’s previous Meg and The Trench, which featured giant sharks and impressive underwater wildlife details, it’s not as if he’s stretching.

    This being said, Alten has obviously read a lot of military thrillers: his heart is definitely at the first place and so is his imagination. While the technical exactitude of the novel often seems stretched beyond any reasonable measure at times, Alten is first and foremost an entertainer, and he certainly delivers the goods. The opening chapter features the spectacular destruction of an American carrier group, and the action scene that details the escape of the sole survivor is as exciting as anything I remember reading in the genre recently.

    Alas, Alten isn’t as skilled when comes the time to add Science Fiction in the mix. The SF-themed sections of Goliath, featuring yet another AI that flips out and wants to eradicate humanity, read like an intentional take-off on Frankenstein (Oooh, that lightning-strikes scene! It’s ALIIIVE!) mixed with a bio-mechanical monsters that seems poorly stolen from the the awful movie VIRUS. Everything’s just too easy to this mad scientist, able to design several Manhattan-sized projects single-handedly. (I can only guess it’s true when they say that being evil gives you extraordinary powers.)

    There are also problems with the narrative arc of the novel. The background relationship between protagonists Rochelle Jackson and Gunnar Wolfe are mostly useless, and so is Jackson’s presence in the opening of the novel. Alten succumbed to the usual lure of making everything interconnected, making the universe of his novel look much smaller than it ought to be.

    But sacrificing plausibility, be it in domains like military technology, scientific accuracy, characterization or geopolitical politics, can be forgiven if the result is interesting. And for all of its faults (and the slight last-third lull), Goliath delivers the goods when it comes to pure reading fun. So maybe, despite changing geopolitics, there’s hope for techno-thrillers after all. If the current world situation doesn’t make any sense, maybe they don’t have to either.

  • Turning Thirty, Mike Gayle

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Flame, 2000, 350 pages, C$14.99 tpb, ISBN 0-340-76794-4

    I know it’s fashionable among some genre readers to deride “general” fiction as being, somehow, un-cool. I should know; I’ve been there. When you’re used to star-spanning wars, far-reaching conspiracies, intricate murders and a bunch of dungeons and/or dragons, why even care at all about boring “relationships”? I get enough of that in my own life, thank you. What doesn’t help is the (oft-justified) sense that a lot of that so-called “mainstream” fiction are merely navel-gazing exercises by pretentious artistes with, er, deficient story-telling abilities. Life is too short; why bore myself with a dull three-hundred-pages meditation on how being single sucks? I could write such things myself.

    But genre readers should also be the first ones to warn others against hasty judgements based on clichés and hasty generalizations. Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, for instance, meets most of the prerequisites for general, mainstream fiction… and yet it proved to be a hilarious and impulsively readable account of modern life. Mike Gayle’s Turning Thirty is in the same tradition, down to the oh-so-fashionable iconic cover design that manages to convey its “not your parents’ gen-lit!” hip attitude.

    Turning Thirty begins as its narrator manages to undergo the easiest break-up in the history of mankind. Officially single, bored with his life in fast-paced New York, lined up for a job in Australia, he decides to take a short sabbatical back in his hometown back in England. A few weeks at his parents’ place, a few reunions with old friends, some time off until it’s time to start his new job in Australia… it’s a good plan, if it wasn’t for one slight detail: the clock is ticking down to his thirtieth anniversary, and his sort-of-early-mid-life crisis is ticking along with it. An ex-girlfriend will complicate things… but then again, this sort of thing wouldn’t be worth reading if it didn’t feature tons of complications.

    Fortunately, Gayle can write as well as Fielding (sigh; I need a bigger data sample. I really should start reading some Nick Hornby) when it comes to presenting the complexities of today’s younger adults. He does so from a male perspective, granted, but it doesn’t matter much one way or the other; it would be highly presumptuous to consider Turning Thirty as an examination of what it means to be thirty in today’s western democracies, but the novel is peppered with flashes of recognition that will be shared by most. (Even die-hard geeks like me get a chance to nod their heads as one character maintains that the last three hours of “Babylon 5” were the best thing ever broadcast on TV.) The dry British tone is just distant enough to offer something new to North-American readers.

    While the protagonist’s lack of decisiveness can be annoying (and depressing) at time, Turning Thirty is easy reading; just sit down on a sunny afternoon and turn the pages. There are plenty of laughs, plenty of good turns of phrases and plenty of plain good fun. I wasn’t terribly impressed by the wimpy resolution (which doesn’t seem solidly motivated), but plenty of room is left in the epilogue to suggest that the likely couple will get to snoggle a lot once the final page is turned.

    All told, this is one worthwhile non-genre novel. Deftly mixing romantic pains, growing-up concerns, a heavy dose of nostalgia with assorted musings on modern life, Turning Thirty is the kind of novel worth reading, worth sharing and worth discussing. Not perfect, but good enough that it doesn’t matter.

  • The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams, Lawrence Block

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dutton, 1994, 293 pages, C$31.95 tpb, ISBN 1-874-06147-5

    (Read in French as Le Blues du Libraire, translated by Robert Pépin)

    Writing a novel about the virtues of books is clearly an exercise in preaching to the converted, but then again, so is going to the church to hear a sermon, and I haven’t heard anyone complaining about that lately. Some of the best crime mysteries I’ve read over the past year have been John Dunning’s “Cliff Janeway” mysteries (Booked to Die and The Bookman’s Wake) if only for the sheer love of books exhibited in those novels. The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams is another title in the same vein, about a protagonist who loves books.

    Now, I’m probably showing my ignorance of Lawrence Block’s entire oeuvre by comparing The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams to Dunning’s diptych. A cursory glance at his entire output so far, courtesy of Amazon.com, shows a number of other novels starring Bernie Rhodenbarr, the protagonist of the novel discussed here. For all I know, those are all better books.

    But if they are, I’m impressed. The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams is the perfect example of the evening time-waster, the kind of novel fit to be read in a single sitting. It features, conveniently enough, a ex-con bookseller who’s trying to stay straight even ten years after his last conviction. But like an addiction to liquor, thievery is hard to resist, especially when events are driving him to desperation: It’s not easy being a used book seller in New York. When his landlord drops in to confirm a vertiginous hike in building fees, Bernie is at a loss. But when an alluring hint is dropped about a rich couple being away from their apartment for months, well…

    That’s barely the setup of the novel, mind you. Once Bernie dons his cat-suit for the first time in a decade, trouble just keeps on piling over him. He’ll discover a body hidden in the empty apartment, puzzle over a locked-room mystery, realize he’s been set-up, answer to the police, perform a few “exceptional” services and discover unsettling links between his predicaments and his landlord. Plus, yes, he will trade Ted Williams as he’ll piece together the mystery.

    Some crime novels are written to heavy metal, some to Latin salsa and some to classical opera. This one is closer to cool refreshing jazz, seeing how comfortable it all feels. Bernie may often omit crucial details in his narration, but what would be unforgivable in another context seems almost inconsequential here as we’re swept away in Bernie’s tale. It’s useless to be picky about the way the narrator lies to us: The details don’t matter very much (in fact, I can’t even remember whole chunks of the plot even days after reading the book), but the atmosphere definitely persists. The matter-of-fact way Bernie describes his illicit escapades hides a variety of procedural details in plain sight, allowing us inside Bernie’s head as he goes through other people’s houses.

    A subtle humor permeates the book, including a discussion about the sexual orientation of famous mystery protagonists. Few will be surprised to see a cat being part of the tale. And all throughout, the carefree, easy-going narration of Block/Rhodenbarr just helps the reader turn the pages away. It ends, classically enough, with Bernie rounding up the usual suspects and giving them the straight story. It’s all very amusing.

    One doesn’t have to love books, or cats, or baseball to like The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams. It’s a perfectly respectable mystery novel on its own. Just relax and be swept away.

  • A Short Victorious War (Honor Harrington 3), David Weber

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1994, 376 pages, C$7.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-87596-5

    By this third volume of the Honor Harrington series, readers know what to expect, and for Weber not to deliver would be cruel given the exciting setup suggested by the title: war! Once again, we will see protagonist Honor Harrington battle against impossible odds and triumph after numerous obstacles. What can I say? It’s a best-selling recipe. Weber has already won the hearts and the minds of most of the military Science Fiction readership.

    Avoiding ennui may be slightly harder for readers not entirely devoted to the military-SF sub-genre. It’s all good and cool for Harrington to unleash considerable whup-ass on her adversaries, but after three volumes, it gets to be tiresome.

    Let’s see: Once again, the eeevil Havenites socialists (grrr!) are on the warpath. They think they can simply wage a little war against Manticorian allies, win it in a flash, bolster their treasury and quieten domestic dissent in the process. Naturally, there is one slight unpredictable factor in their plan: Honor Harrington, who has recently assumed command of the battlecruiser HMS Nike. She’s mean, she’s tough and she’s got a score or two to settle with the Havenites. Alas, she’s also stuck around Pavel Young, another old adversary who also has a score to settle with her…

    At least A Short Victorious War manages to widen the scope of her actions. Whereas the action of the first two volumes was focused on one-on-one naval battles, this third entry shows us not only part of the action behind Havenite enemy lines, but expands Harrington’s field of command to encompass a small fleet of ships. It also delves a little bit deeper in the political and diplomatic ramifications of her career, expanding the credibility of the universe she evolves in. Obviously, Harringtons’ future adventures should evolve beyond the strictly military aspect, and this third volume is a promising development.

    On a personal level, this is also the book in which Harrington comes to grip with her injuries of the previous volume. It is also the novel where She Gets Some (and, surprisingly enough, the one who gives it to her doesn’t Get It by the end of the story). Her cadre of friends and influential allies is strengthened; I was particularly enamoured by Michelle “Mike” (ugh) Henke and the growing influence of the Earl of “White Haven”.

    Fortunately, the readability of Weber’s prose here is still as good as anything else he’s done; it helps enormously that Harrington is a wonderful character; the interest of A Short Victorious War diminishes sharply whenever she’s off-screen. (Hence the consequent lull in the middle of the book, though it can also be blames on the necessity to place all pieces in play for the last big battle) It also seemed to me as if he also managed to improve the pacing of his strictly military action scenes; the ending of this third entry is improved by some personal stakes in the final battle.

    All good, then, for the series. As you may infer, I’m still wishing for a greater variety in the plotting; those big final battles are getting tiresome, especially when there’s no doubt as to how they’ll turn out. Still, the series keeps most of its interest, and all signs point to an expansion of the series in latter volumes. Bring on the fourth.

  • Blood Work, Michael Connelly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1998, 498 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60262-0

    Anyone with the slightest interest in how badly Hollywood can botch a book adaptation has to take in account Clint Eastwood’s 2002 take on Michael Connelly’s Blood Work. While I’m sure this is hardly a unique case of a screenwriter savaging an original work, BLOOD WORK has the particularity of featuring not only a completely new ending (a common enough event in cinematic adaptation) but a brand-new villain! Indeed, the identity of the serial killer is switched from one character to another from book to movie, along with the villain’s family name just to make things even more confusing. The result, as you may expect, is a bit of a mess, bringing down a rather good novel to the level of a predictable crime thriller.

    In light of this, reading the novel after seeing the movie can be a very interesting experience.

    The initial premise stays the same, mind you: A convalescent detective (Terry McCaleb), recuperating from a heart transplant, is asked to investigate the murder of his very own organ donor. Mix in a romantic entanglement with the client, (the sister of the donor), a steady accumulation of clues as well as a sadistic serial killer who just won’t quit and you’ve got yourself a delicious little crime thriller.

    Alas, other aspects are decidedly less endearing. The various nauseous double-entendres about hearts, blood, love and whatnot are tiresome, and so is some of the romance between McCaleb and “the client”. Feel free to be queasy as you see fit.

    Also less successful is the exasperating ending, which was thankfully shortened in the movie. Rather than wrap up the book in a timely fashion, we get an entirely new act in isolated Mexico. The movie’s wrap-up may have been indistinguishable from dozen of other movie shoot’em ups, but at least it had the merit of being over in five short minutes.

    Fortunately, Connelly’s writing is fluid enough to make even a padded ending still feel interesting. His writing is crisp, flows well and has an eye for detail. The novel usually hits its stride whenever it turns to the purely procedural elements of the plot. Our protagonist’s forays in the workings of the organ donor system, his careful examinations of crime evidence, his intuitive leaps of logic are easily the most fascinating elements of the book.

    It adds additional interest that McCaleb is a convalescent detective. Unlike the usual manly, two-fisted private detectives that usually drive crime thrillers, McCaleb needs a driver, can’t get too worked up and has to consult a medical specialist before engaging in strenuous activities. I’ll bet you haven’t seen that elsewhere in crime fiction. The biggest difference between the book and the film, and the biggest mistake made by the film, isn’t the ending or the different identity of the serial killer, but the nature of the changes made to McCaleb. Whereas he’s a portly forty-year-old in the novel, production concerns dictated that the protagonist of the film became none other than seventy-years-old Clint Eastwood. (It’s hard to say no when he’s also directing the film) This completely modified the impression left by the story on-screen, where we’re more liable to worry about Eastwood slipping and breaking a hip than having a heart attack. The various action scenes gratuitously thrown in the script also didn’t help the film’s credibility given the condition of the protagonist. One thing is for sure: you won’t read about McCaleb firing a shotgun at a speeding car in this novel, no sir!

    None of this matters, of course, if you’ve never seen the film. All in all, you’re still better off reading the book. The story slowly gives way to a pretty cool twists (which most seasoned readers will see coming, but is still pretty nifty nonetheless) and the wealth of procedural details is fascinating in its own right. Blood Work is worth a look regardless of the movie tie-in. After all, it surely doesn’t come across as any surprise to learn that the book is usually better than the movie, right?

  • Pallas, L. Neil Smith

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1993, 446 pages, C$6.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-50904-8

    Libertarian fiction can be very amusing if it’s done right. “Done right”, in this instance, can be as simple as arguing vigorously in a way that doesn’t make me feel like a moron or, maybe more importantly, as if the author himself isn’t a moron —or even worse, a righteous son-of-a-Birch.

    It’s a delicate balance. Libertarianism is so orthogonal to the classical false left-right axis that like truly good ideas, it takes a light touch to explain. L. Neil Smith has done so previously with The Probability Broach, a compulsively readable novel in which we were shown the wonders of a Libertarian parallel-universe utopia. Not only was it a heck of a read, but it made a few points about Libertarianism that were worth considering.

    Pallas isn’t comparable. Oh, it’s serviceable enough as a story of Emerson Ngu, a young man living on a terraformed asteroid (Pallas) who defects from a socialist enclave and escapes to the larger Libertarian society (Curringer) that surrounds it. Free of restrictions on his personal freedom, he will make friends, meet love, become an entrepreneur and radically alter the future of the human race. No, I’m not really kidding.

    At least Pallas makes for decent entertainment: the writing style may not match the one in The Probability Broach for ease of reading, but it’s certainly more accessible that in Smith’s Martyn series. Despite some dangerously boring passages in the first few dozen pages that have almost no relation to the rest of the story, Pallas picks itself up whenever it focuses on Emerson and his perils. As a coming-of-age novel, it’s more than halfway readable.

    Where, technically, the book stumbles is when it describes the rest of Emerson’s life. Suddenly, events are telescoped, years are jumped, and the narrative accelerates to an ending that feels a touch too forced through too many coincidences. Along the way, the charm of Emerson’s first discoveries gets lost in the rush to an accelerated second half.

    If my problems with the book stopped there, it still wouldn’t that hard to recommend the book. Unfortunately, more serious problems abound with Pallas, some of them intrinsic to the plotting, some of them more closely related to either Smith’s ideology or basic Libertarian principles.

    Plotting first (beware slight spoilers): So we are to believe that an entirely libertarian environment would accept a socialist enclave. Okay, sure, I’m game. But then we’re to believe that for the entire decades-long history of Curringer, no one of the die-hard libertarian colonists before Emerson ever though of manufacturing guns or personal transporters? C’mon, Neil: You’re taking your readers for morons.

    In fact, that “readers are morons” assumption seems to contaminate more than the plotting. Characterization, for instance: It’s not enough for the lead antagonist to be a socialist (egawd, eek, etc.), but of course he had to be a pedophile and a woman-beater. This, taken to a larger extent, is emblematic of one of the most obnoxious aspects of Libertarian/Objectivist fiction (yes, there is a suspiciously Ayn Rand-like character in Pallas): if you’re not a full-bore militant Libertarian, you have to be not just stupid, but evil too.

    For a political ideology that prides itself on considering everyone “as adults”, Libertarianism often feels like a cult that loves to paint everything in black and white, with friend or foes, unable to compromise and find middle ground like, well, true adults. In Pallas, another villain conveniently does something so incredibly stupid that he gets killed as our heroes essentially nod and say “What did you expect? He wasn’t one of us.” Reading the novel, you’d be prone to associate vegetarianism with child-abuse and totalitarianism, whereas the good meat-eating hunters of Pallas’ utopian society are all vigorous, valorous and virtuous.

    Marxism, Libertarianism: different ideas, same dogmatism? I actually liked Pallas quite a bit, but it’s broad simplifications like the ones above which make me reluctant to recommend a novel despite whatever sympathies I may have for some of its ideals. If your tolerance for some of these ideas is different than mine, please adjust accordingly.