Book Review

  • The Moon Goddess and the Son, Donald Kingsbury

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1986, 471 pages, C$5.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-65381-4

    The Cold War has been over for more than a decade, but the books of that era will continue to dog us for a while yet. When readers and critic discuss Donald Kingsbury, they usually talk about Courtship Rite, or even Psychohistorical Crisis, but most tend to forget that the capable Canadian SF author has written a novel in-between, The Moon Goddess and the Son. With good reason, mind you: While I can still imagine the previous two titles being read, discussed and enjoyed decades from now, it’s going to take some effort to even try pretending that his second novel was anything more than an overlong mess.

    No, I’m not going to try to pretend deep love and affection for the novel, despite all the personal respect I’ve got for the author and my usual bias for all things Canadians (or, in Kingsbury’s case, from the Montreal area) I’m feeling cranky, and that’s because dull books that take forever to establish a novella’s worth of story always make me cranky.

    Heralding from the Cold War’s last dying moments (hey, 1986 is already, what, more than fifteen years old), The Moon Goddess and the Son is a hodge-podge of Soviet philosophy, space boosterism, March-September romance (ew), clashing generations and attempts at a political thriller. It’s long, it’s rambling and if there are quite a few things to like about it, it takes forever to get to them.

    You may think, at first, that this is a story about a space-struck young girl who, when she’s abused by her father, escapes into fantasies about a famous astronaut. But don’t, because that’ll come into play only late in the novel (in pretty much the fashion you apprehend). Then again, The Moon Goddess and the Son may be about the famous astronaut and his difficult family relationships. But that’s not it either, at least not at first. Then again, this may be about a role-playing game designer at the end of his rope and the sadistic treatment he’s got in mind for his abusive boss.

    Now that may be a thread. Because the designer’s elaborate pain-and-punishment recreation of Russian history ends up being exactly what his boss is asking for in order to understand the Russian mind. Meanwhile, in another plot thread, our young star-struck teenager will sleep with the spaceman of her dreams as well as his son, helping out the family by doing so. Yes, it’s that kind of novel.

    But it’ll take forever to get to those plot points. Most of the novel is a pointless collection of scenes that does little to advance the story. Character do stuff; we don’t care. Saudi Arabia undergoes a revolution; we care even less. The Russians threaten to take over the world; maybe that would be best for all involved.

    Oh, it’s not as if it’s a total loss: The Russian national character is described with noblesse and respect, setting this novel apart from some of its contemporary ultra-paranoid fiction. Some of the technical details are interesting. It all amounts to a novella’s worth of story.

    But it will take special skills today to slog through this brick. Cold War-era politics are about as useful as Tzarist policies these days, and a lot of the cheering for space exploration seems identical from what we’re hearing these days. Coupled to the lack of sustained dramatic hard, it makes it hard to imagine that anyone but Kingsbury completists (and I’ll raise my hand at this moment) being willing to undergo this particular mild punishment.

    Maybe there’s a historical worth to this book, if only for a feel of 1986-era thinking. But then again you could just grab Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising and “get” the cold war. As far as Kingsbury is concerned, grab Courtship Rite, read it, treasure it, cherish it and skip directly to Psychohistorical Crisis. Anything else would just be a waste of time.

  • The Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dell, 1979 (1988 omnibus), 545 pages, C$13.95 tpb, ISBN 0-440-50070-2

    Robert Anton Wilson takes great care, early in The Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, to warn us that “contrarily to appearances, [it] is not a mere ‘routine’ or ‘shaggy shoggoth story’” [P.10] I beg to half-differ. While this trilogy isn’t routine, it certainly feels like a shaggy shoggoth story. Pleasant to read but frustrating in terms of conventional plotting, Schrödinger’s Cat can be lot of fun as long as you don’t expect anything resembling an ultimate answer.

    Nor any definitive plot, character, dramatic arc or conclusion, for that matter. The central conceit of the trilogy is that it studies the adventures of a few dozen characters in parallel universes. Some of them are more-or-less identical from one universe to another; others are rather different. The American political leadership of any given universe ends up having a substantial impact on the overall feel of each universe —though even Wilson couldn’t imagine the Reagan presidency.

    The genius of the trilogy is how the events in one universe inform our understanding of another. Characters are introduced in one timeline, explored in another and left as supporting players in yet another universe. The explanation to some events must be found elsewhere in the book as given situations are explored from other perspectives.

    It’s hard to say anything conclusive about the whole work (as Wilson seemingly takes delight in confusing the heck out of anyone even trying to make sense of the overall flow), but it looks as if every book of the trilogy covers an alternate universe, at the exception of the first volume which gives us a second timeline for free after the catastrophic end of the first one.

    Normally, I wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about such artistic attempts; I like my fiction straight and linear, and have no patience with books where the author tries to pass off indecisiveness as subtlety. But what reconciled me with this trilogy (aside from the emphasis on science and technology as Good Things) is how even if I wasn’t bothered to follow along with what may or not be a plot, there were enough amusing vignettes to keep me occupied. The narrative is filled with zingers, from the tyrannical “Unistat” empire to a literary critic talking about “Norman Mailer-than-thou”. The character sketches are sympathetic and effective. (Heck, even the author is a character.) The various pranks, events, anecdotes that make up the bulk of the trilogy’s vignettes are rather amusing when taken approached one at a time.

    Madness awaits anyone trying to make sense of it all, though. The Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy isn’t a movie, and doesn’t follow a conventional A-to-B narrative. It may be best compared to an intricate surrealistic painting, where elements are disposed on a surface that suggests proximity but doesn’t necessarily represent affinity between the parts. Think hologram. Think author on acid. Think “read a random page, rip it out, repeat”. Think chapters in a blender.

    Yes, there’s no doubt that this is artsy-trippy stuff. I could understand anyone being reluctant to take it on. If you do, one piece of advice; read as much of it at once. The accumulation of background details is slight but noticeable, and you’ll get much more out of the trilogy if you do read a solid chunk of it in near succession. Some jokes play off each other, and the vast cast of characters may be obscure from time to time. (It also helps to have strong and fond memories of the Illuminatus! trilogy, given that elements of it, such as The Beast and Hagbard Celine, make a return appearance) As long as you don’t try to make too much sense out of it, it’s easy reading. But there are no big answers, no big finale, no puppet-master pulling the strings from the metaverse. It ends in mid-story. It probably warrants a re-read every couple of years.

    In short, this isn’t an ordinary book. It’s both fun and frustrating, easy to read and impossible to understand. Maybe I even completely misinterpreted everything. Yet I don’t care all that much. As long as I’ve been entertained, who am I to complain?

  • Operation Fantasy Plan, Peter Gilboy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Morrow, 1997, 290 pages, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 0-688-15246-5

    Though it may be hard to imagine at this particular moment in time, there was a time, barely six years ago, where it was fashionable to think dark thoughts about the CIA. Rather than have this reputation as hard-working defenders of our Western freedoms, the CIA could be used in thrillers as a deeply corrupt agency with no compulsions whatsoever. If exploiting human weaknesses was what it took in order to secure access to information vital to the protection of American interests, well, so be it.

    For the longest time, protagonist Peter Gaines had been one of those operators, doing what was necessary in order to weasel information out of semi-cooperative agents. But everyone has his limits, and Gaines’ is reached when he’s put in charge of “Fantasy Store”, a high-class bordello in Bangkok. Here, every vice is catered to as long as cameras are rolling in order to provide good blackmail material. The more despicable the act, the better the blackmail. Gaines reacts poorly and is promptly fired for his excess of conscience.

    There is, naturally, a woman at the root of the problem: Songka, the newest recruit of “Fantasy Store”, the most beautiful woman Gaines has ever seen. He goes nuts for her, and his quest to find her again will take him back to Thailand even though the CIA is watching his every move. In this new civilian life, Peter has to learn that nothing is what it seems and every revelation might not be entirely truthful.

    Operation Fantasy Plan could have been written during the seventies by a British author and it would still be the same novel. The prose exudes an air of deep cynicism and of resigned weariness. The dour narration is interesting at first, taking us deep in a world of secrets upon secrets. The first few chapters are a crash-course in psychological manipulation, as Gaines recounts his training and the major incidents of his career. The first-person narration makes it impossible to hide or to distance ourselves from the narrative. Gaines isn’t much of an optimist, and the style of the novel reflects that.

    As the tale emerges, though, a few problems appear. For a die-hard cynic, Gaines moves deeper and deeper in sentimental territory that’s hard to justify, even for someone as smitten as he is. It’s understandable that this is written as a romantic story as much as a straight-up thriller, but the endless pining of the narrator for “his” Songka gets to be a bit much after a while.

    Then there’s the small-world cliché, in which every single person mentioned in the first five chapters end up being vitally important to the story resolution, with particular boos to “Vaal” as being the worst example of this.

    Plus there’s the novel’s declining interest once the “big secret” is out of the bag, maybe three-quarter of the way in the novel. The rest isn’t nearly as compelling, as we’re down to a who-trusts-who game that gets so twisty it’s tiresome. Compared to the rather fun first third, the third act is too long, too depressing and far too sentimental. What began as summer reading ends up in a heavy philosophical morass closer to John LeCarre than to Richard Marcinko. Some will be impressed; some will be disappointed.

    Not that anyone will have time to complain, I suspect. At a brisk and airy 290 pages, Operation Fantasy Plan is short enough that even the most demanding readers won’t lose too much time over this. The result is an adequate, but ultimately forgettable novel that simply doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from the pack.

  • Maelstrom, Peter Watts

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2001, 371 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-56679-3

    I had been mildly critical of Peter Watts’ first novel Starfish, but intrigued enough by his potential that it wasn’t much of a struggle to decide to read the sequel, Maelstrom,. Now it turns out that I’m similarly half-critical of the second novel, but for rather different reasons.

    Maelstrom begins not long after the cataclysmic events of Starfish‘s climax. (Don’t bother reading if you’re not familiar with the first book) The North American west coast has been trashed, and that only make a bad world worse. The whole global communication network is acting up, environmental collapse is well under way, gigantic corporations are up to their usual dirty tricks and a fractal death-wish seems to be affecting every aspect of the world, from single individuals to entire countries.

    In this situation steps in Lenie Clarke, the very very bitter (and very very powerful) surviving protagonist of Starfish. She wants answers. She wants closure. She wants justice. And very few people are going to be willing to stand in her way once she gets going. If she has to kill millions in order to fulfill her goals, well, most of these millions are already ready to die for her…

    If your SF diet has grown a touch too optimistic lately, it’s time to delve in the dystopian nightmare that makes up most of Maelstrom. Here, impending global cataclysm (from a variety of sources) is a backdrop to a series of very dark adventures in which an outbreak of primordial microbes is the least of everyone’s worries. The environment is trashed anyway. Violence is commonplace. Employees are guilt-tripped by their employers in acting in the best interest of shareholders, and the cure to that particular issue may be even worse than the problem itself.

    It’s not a cheery novel and this lack of cheer does eventually take its toll. The dense but generally dour prose style does little to propel the story forward. The book’s single biggest failing may be how it remains curiously indifferent to the events it describes. A more nervous, more direct writing style might have been appropriate considering the magnitude of the story. But Watts seems more content with a style that seems designed to depress even beyond what happens in the story. A most angst-ridden bunch of characters would be hard to find. It’s not obvious (nor even desirable, maybe) to emphasize with them.

    Fortunately, SF fans can look forward to a bunch of tasty little details. From marine microbiology to computer science and neurobiology, Watts reaches deep in background detail (a wonderful pure-science discussion/bibliography is helpfully provided at the end of the book) for plenty of cutting-edge concepts. And not just technical ideas either: Here, Québec has emerged as an important player on the geopolitical scene thanks to its massive hydro-electrical projects ensuring plenty of energy for sale. Resentment is palpable almost everywhere else.

    Indeed, perhaps the best thing about Maelstrom is how the scope of the story has expanded. For a cycle that had its beginning in a short story (“A Niche”) exclusively set on an underwater station, Watts has embraced the whole world (with a focus on Ontario) as a canvas for Maelstrom. The story lives up to the title, offering a shifting web of complex -sometimes even contradictory- alliances.

    In the end, the telling of the tale might not do justice to the content of the story, but Maelstrom certain has a lot to offer to readers with a a penchant for dystopian tales. In some ways, this is grown-up cyberpunk, with its usual clichés assimilated in a larger, more complex setting. It’s not a perfect book, but the good outweighs the bad by a significant margin. Heck, enough to make me interested in his next novel.

  • 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.