Book Review

  • Permanence, Karl Schroeder

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2002, 447 pages, C$38.95 hc, ISBN 0-765-30371-X

    Finding a good book is great, but finding a new author is even better. It’s not as if I’ve never raved about Karl Schroeder before (you can find reviews of his previous work elsewhere on this site), but with his second solo novel, Permanence, he proves that his first novel, Ventus, wasn’t a fluke and that he’s worthy of being on my list of authors to buy in hardcover.

    And that, constant reader, takes some serious talent. For hard-SF geeks like me, to-buy authors must demonstrate that they play the game as well as the best: They have to include a lot of new ideas, cool concepts and a vigorous story to back it all up. (Well, okay: I admit that I can do without a story if the ideas are cool enough.)

    Fortunately, Schroeder is already a dependable professional in his second outing. He co-wrote The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing SF, after all. He knows what he’s talking about when it comes to delivering a polished commercial SF product.

    The opening of Permanence itself is a model in how to introduce a brand-new universe: Modeled on teen adventure SF novels (as a teenage girl escapes an abusive family situation by taking over a spaceship and fleeing to another solar system), it allows us to peek at this new world through the viewpoint of a character that knows just enough to guide us while still having a lot of room to marvel at the cool stuff.

    And there’s a heck of a lot of new stuff to behold. Schroeder has taken a look at the latest astronomic discoveries, which suggest a large number of brown dwarves star scattered across the cosmos, and built a brand-new future that takes advantage of this new knowledge. Here, humanity is divided between the “lit” worlds around stars, linked together through FLT travel, and “halo” world around the brown dwarves, struggling along through regular Slower-than-light cargo trips. The differences run deeper, mind you; the “lit” worlds are pretty much all members of the “Rights Economy”, a form of capitalism gone mad where every object and service has been nano-tagged and requires micro-payment. The implications of this economic structure are vertiginous and it’s one of the book’s flaws that we never get a better look at it.

    To this concept, Schroeder deftly adds evolutionary biology speculations, bigger-than-life engineering, ice worlds and tons of other cool stuff. The plot revolves around an intellectual debate raging in Permanence‘s future; is it possible for an intelligent civilisation to survive indefinitely? Are there built-in limits to sentience?

    A cast of characters struggle for control of an alien space-ship that may settle the question. Smirking villains just want ultra-capitalism to triumph while our heroes try to pierce the secrets presented to them. It takes place over years, several planets and plenty of action.

    There are flaws to Permanence and they’re the ones most common to large-scale adventure novels. Some characters are unceremoniously removed (or forgotten) from the narrative. Not all adventures are equally interesting. Some parts, mostly towards the end, drag a bit. The motivations of the antagonists aren’t terribly convincing.

    But cool ideas go a long way in compensating for other deficiencies. Add Permanence to Ventus and I feel as if I’ve discovered another must-read Hard-SF author. From the density of ideas and the narrative control exhibited both of his novels, it certainly looks as if Schroeder can fit in with the other members of that list.

  • Thunderhead, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1999, 533 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60837-8

    By now, every serious beach reader should be familiar with Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s shtick. As “commercial” writers whose objective is simply to make a living writing bestsellers, their modus operandis is clear after half a dozen such works… and Thunderhead is in no way a departure. Most of their usual elements are somewhere to be found in here.

    It starts with a family trauma and a dash of archaeology. Plucky heroine Nora Kelly is a gifted but unfocused archaeologist, following in the footsteps of an absent father who disappeared sixteen years previously on a quest to find Quivira, the lost city of the Anasazi in south-western Utah. Suddenly, a letter from her father lands in her mailbox, a mystery that may reveals the location of the lost city and the fate of her father.

    In fairly short order, she uses space-age techniques to track down a promising path and convinces a rich backer to finance her expedition. A few pages later, she’s headed in the wild with a group of explorers whose personalities will form a lot -but not most- of the book’s suspense. Also tagging along is Bill Smithback, the journalist protagonist of Preston and Child’s previous The Relic and Reliquary.

    In many ways, Thunderhead is a pleasant throwback/update to the type of lost-civilisation adventure novel that was so popular when our planet wasn’t so civilized. With satellite imaging, all-terrain trucks and computer analysis techniques, lost civilisations have disappeared faster than a new suburb can take over another farm. But in this novel, we’re back on the hunt in narrow canyons, tracking a city that may or may not contain tons of gold.

    But who says gold or even “new discoveries” in a Preston and Child novel inevitably implies an excruciatingly painful death for the discoverers (Hey, they’re just borrowing from Crichton: “thou shall not want wealth or forbidden knowledge, especially if thou love high technology.”) Pretty soon -what do you know- the members of the small expedition start dropping dead in a way that may or may not be a supernatural fashion.

    Well, okay, it’s not supernatural, but with the usual wildebeests running around and slaughtering the protagonists, you wouldn’t expect anything else. In any case, the innocents are butchered, the evil characters soon exhibit psychotic tendencies and some protagonists may -or may not- find the loot, explain the mysteries and escape with their lives.

    Fans of lightly-didactic escapist reading will have a lot of fun reading about the lost-lost Anasazi, the archaeological mystery of their disappearance, the techniques used in modern archaeology and how the space shuttle can help find forgotten trails. Child and Preston, like many if not most of their bestselling colleagues, understand the importance of research and little bundles of fun facts to keep their readers happy.

    As a matter of fact, there’s a lot to be happy about in Thunderhead. It’s not terribly new, fresh or subtle, but it just works. Despite my sarcastic attitude, I had no problem reading through Thunderhead in fairly short order. The book doesn’t quite have a perfect rhythm (some parts do drag, especially when it comes to Nora’s brother subplot) but it works more often than it doesn’t, and that’s the most important thing when it comes to escapist summer reading.

    Fans of the authors’ previous books will find plenty of the same here. There are plenty of thrills—natural, artificial or human. The conclusion seems hopelessly copied from one too many Hollywood thrillers (note to bestselling authors; stop assuming that all your novels will be optioned). Even as far as best-selling writers go, Preston and Child still manage to be reasonably original: Every book changes venue and is reasonably distinct from one another. (It would be time to ditch the “ultimate rainstorm” plot point, though; after four books, it’s getting old.) Still, readers should know the drill by now; their name is a stamp of equal quality, whatever the book you’re picking from them.

  • The Honor of the Queen (Honor Harrington 2), David Weber

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1993, 300 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-57864-2

    (read as an e-book, from the War of Honor CD-ROM)

    Honor Harrington is back in this second instalment of David Weber’s wildly popular military fiction series. After being introduced to readers with On Basilisk Station, the capable officer faces another set of impossible odds in this new mission.

    This time, she’s supposed to be on diplomatic duty; the Manticorian Republic is courting another solar system as an ally in an effort to protect itself from the evil socialist Havenites, and so they send in a military/diplomatic delegation to offer support and comfort to a government that has other enemies of its own. Said enemies, naturally enough, are backed by Haven. You can guess what happens from here.

    “Bigger” and “better” are usually the operating directives for sequels, and The Honor of the Queen is no exception, with a structure that is essentially reprised from On Basilisk Station while allowing for more fireworks. It ends with the expected space battle in which Honor triumphs over a vastly better-equipped enemy. Repetitive, but it works; fans of the first volume shouldn’t be disappointed by this one.

    What’s not as successful, though, is the explicit Women-are-people-too content in this entry. One of the most refreshing aspects of On Basilisk Station was how it handled the matter without comment, simply by putting men and women alongside in a military setting, The Honor of the Queen makes it an integral part of the plot, as Honor must demonstrate her competency to the fundamentalist characters she encounter. That smacks of overt preaching, and it’s something I’d like to avoid as much as possible. Oh well; maybe Weber now got it out of his system. Fortunately, Weber avoids the “all theists are evil nuts” cliché by featuring a few sympathetic characters whose beliefs are opposed to Harrington’s. (But they respect her. In this series so far, “goodness” and “badness” can reliably be inferred from anyone’s respect for Harrington.)

    I was rather relieved to see that Honor “gets her patch” in this volume; glancing at the cover art for the latter books, I was sort of worried this would be an important spoiler for a subsequent volume. While I expect some kind of fix in the next few books, at least it explains War of Honor‘s illustration.

    I was also pleased to see Nimitz (Honor’s treecat “pet”, though the term must be used lightly) get a good role. In itself, that compensates for a certain repetitiveness of the structure. It does lead me to ask, though, if every single Honor Harrington book will end with a naval engagement in which Honor is severely outmatched. I recognize that military fiction has a few basic demands and that this is, after all, only the second volume, but it does raise a warning flag.

    Still, despite the familiar feel, there is a lot to like in this entry, from Weber’s unpretentious prose to his willingness to kill a few characters. It’s a pleasant surprise to see Honor’s parents turn in for a few pages. (And I’m even more pleased to notice ethnic diversity creep in Harrington’s very Anglo-Saxon universe, starting with her own Asian-ethnic mother) It’s a weaker entry than the first volume, but patience; this series is barely getting started. I have reason to believe that better stuff awaits.

  • Coercion: Why we Listen to What "They" Say, Douglas Rushkoff

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Riverhead, 1999, 293 pages, C$20.00 tpb, ISBN 1-57322-829-X

    Like most of your contemporaries, you probably think of yourself as a smart, savvy, independent person. You like to make up your own mind: Advertisements don’t work on you, and neither does the cheap rhetoric of politicians, media spokesperson or car dealers. You’re too smart to be taken in by those blatant techniques.

    Well, good for you. But chances are that you’re fooling yourself. Today’s methods for changing your mind on just about any subject are more subtle than a gross sales pitch. They seek to bypass your intellect and get you through your emotions. Sometimes, they actually want you to be so smart as to see through them. Politicians, corporations, religions, celebrity-makers and con artists alike are fighting for a piece of your mind with a desperation that leads to a memetic arms-race: As the target (you) get smarter about their methods, they’ll switch to a new one against which there is no predefined defence.

    In his introduction to Coercion, Douglas Rushkoff describes the strange path that has led him to write the book. From media pundit who took a delight in pointing out how the media was being subverted from within (in Media Virus!), Rushkoff found himself increasingly solicited by ad agencies and media think-tanks, asked to help them harness the power of subversion in order to better market their wares. “Going underground”, so to speak, he collected notes and Coercion is the result of his journey in the underworld. Either that or it’s just another way for him to sell more books; from the start, Rushkoff takes an impish pleasure in pointing how he himself is selling his book to a potential audience. Unless he’s simply being meta-clever, hoping to attract readers who think they’re smarter than him? Hmmm…

    Still, most of Coercion is a description of how sophisticated the battle for mindspace has become. Salesman techniques borrow from CIA interrogation manuals (or the other way around); malls and supermarkets use psychology in arranging their displays layouts; sects and scams alike are optimized in a pyramidal model (so is the stock market); religious groupings share traits with political rallies, rock shows and wrestling events; public relations take the unpleasant truth and twist it in a logical feel-good story ready for mass consumption; publicity campaigns resort to cynicism in order to be hip for the media-savvy audiences. Oh, and the Internet isn’t the consensus-busting tool is promised to be, but has become jut another marketing tool. (Surprise!)

    All fine and well (and familiar to anyone who’s well-read in psychology, specialized media and counter-literature such as Adbusters magazine) but one of Rushkoff’s main sub-themes is to illustrate how this incessant war for your attention is having an impact on the Rest of Your Life. Friendly Salespersons compliment your figure in order to sell you clothes, but isn’t the same duplicity undistinguishable from comments received by friends? When the government distorts the truth to manufacture consent for another war in the Gulf, doesn’t this undermine what they’re saying about other things? What about spam: deluged by a flow of trash, some people are simply abandoning this mean of communication. Indeed, argues Rushkoff, as marketers are becoming more desperate and devious, they are threatening the fabric of civility. That’s the nagging feeling most of us get when marketing makes a new intrusion in our lives.

    Indeed, it’s difficult to read Coercion without tying it with our own lives. I myself was shocked, not as much in seeing what techniques were “used” on me, but how I was using some methods -notably at work- to facilitate my life. Brr!

    But it’s easy to become paranoid when reading this book, and that’s something against which Rushkoff warns us. Being aware is good; being paranoid makes us needlessly fearful, dismissing the good along with the bad. Still, a faint doubt remains, and that should also be the case for you: What if this web site, these hundreds of pages, these millions bytes, are nothing but a subtle way to sell you Rushkoff’s book?

  • The End of War, David L. Robbins

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 2000, 506 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-58138-4

    Early 1945. The Third Reich is crumbling, attacked from two fronts: The Allies have been in Europe for six months and the Russians are pitting the might of their war machine against a battered German army. Both sides are rushing towards Berlin. Whoever first captures the capital will get to dictate Europe’s geopolitical history for decades. As high-level talks divvy up lines on a map, it’s up to the soldiers to suffer through the consequences of these decisions.

    After writing about the battle of Stalingrad in The War of the Rats, David L. Robbins goes back to World War II with The End of War, a novel about the race for Berlin in the last few weeks of the European front. Not only a story about the end of WW2, The End of War is also a portentous narrative that suggests most of subsequent European history.

    It is, naturally enough, a big subject, involving millions of men from more than three nations on two continents. The sweep of the events may be epic, but Robbins carefully restricts his characters to only a few. As he point out in the author’s foreword,

    The End of War is constructed along the lines of a Greek tragedy: the gods discuss the affairs of man, then their Olympians intents are played at human level. In this novel, the gods are Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, and Franklin Roosevelt. Lesser deities include General Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. The book’s corresponding mortals are three fictional characters – one Russian soldier, one German civilian, and one American photojournalist.

    As the race toward Berlin heats up, the novel describes the high-level negotiations -Malta, Yalta, etc- that led to the Russian takeover of Berlin. Naturally enough, the most interesting storyline is the American one, as photojournalist Charley Bandy is closer to our own viewpoint. As an observer, he witnesses the battlefield as we would, and reacts to the discovery of Nazi atrocities much like we would too. The next most interesting storyline is Lottie’s story: as a female cellist stuck in Berlin as the two armies converge on their ultimate objective, she’s the viewpoint by which we witness the city being bombed in submission. Finally, the third storyline is a young Soviet Soldier’s perspective as he fights his way to Berlin. Some readers will probably find this to be the book’s strongest storyline, but it just seemed dull compared to the more immediate plights of the two others.

    Yet, The End of War does a good job at telling the story leading up to the last few days of the European front. The historical credibility of the novel is high thanks to the depth of research demonstrated by the details of the narrative. But what’s even more effective is Robbin’s ability to convey the lassitude of the characters involved in the events. The endgame is as much a matter of endurance as of might, and the fatigue that permeates everyone’s decisions is palpable.

    History buffs will undoubtedly devour The End of War as a compelling war story. There is a lot of material packed in those five hundred pages. While not stories here are as equally compelling, they all add up to an impressive historical portrait. It’s another splendid effort by Robbins; maybe not as memorable as the very personal sniper duel in War of the Rats, but impressive in its own right.

  • The Third Option, Vince Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 2000, 402 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-04732-9

    Vince Flynn’s first thriller, Term Limits, was a provocative thriller in which super-patriot terrorists began killing corrupt politicians. While the novel later settled for a very disappointing conclusion closer to what we’d call “the usual thriller”, it was an original debut from a writer with potential. Flynn once again delivered the goods with Transfer of Power, a by-the-number hostage thriller in which the White House was taken over by Middle Eastern terrorists. Despite familiar plot mechanics, it was a decent enough novel with enough dynamic energy to make it interesting.

    Sadly enough, Flynn’s third outing displays none of the interest and most of the flaws of his previous efforts. It’s dull, pointless and reminiscent of the type of so-called “thrillers” churned out by Robert Ludlum in his most featureless period.

    There isn’t even a decent hook to draw us in. Once again, an American secret operative is double-crossed and left for dead. Naturally enough, he’s barely wounded and vows revenge on whoever betrayed him. There are friends in high places, enemies in equivalent positions and high-level political intrigue. Our hero is forced to flee, infiltrate, attack and punish. All of which has been done before in much more interesting stories.

    Worse; in The Third Option (which refers to “special” intelligence work, once diplomacy and military force are no longer practical), Flynn explicitly brings back characters from his previous two novels. Super-agent Mitch Rapp is back as the protagonist (along with his girlfriend, with predictable plot developments) and Congressman Michael O’Rourke follows up from the events of Term Limits.

    The biggest problem with continuing series is that it robs the reader of a sense of unpredictability. While this is acceptable -even comforting- in some genres such as the mystery genre (see Robert B. Parker’s Spencer series), it’s not an option in the thriller genre. Here, part of the pleasure of reading is in not knowing what can happen at a very high level. The president can be assassinated; a city can be incinerated; conspiracies can be uncovered; protagonists can die. Here, the stakes become correspondingly smaller. The magnitude of the thrill is reduced by built-in constraints. Any writer tempted to write, as Flynn is doing, “a series of political thrillers” would be advised to reconsider. (This goes double for editors trying to sell this stuff.)

    The Third Option‘s conclusion is a splendid example of how series can hamper the thrills; all of our protagonists survive and some of the villains are caught while the bigger villains escape to strike another day, much like in any bad cartoon made for children. Thrills? Slight. Memorable impressions? Even slighter. Worse; the novel is padded, drawing out the unsatisfying conclusion. Some of the political manoeuvring is implausible even for a guy stuck in Ottawa, a fatal blow to a so-called serious “political thriller”.

    To be entirely fair, it’s impossible to know at this point what Flynn has in mind for his series. Is it all leading up to a concluding tome which will kill the whole cast and send Washington in orbit? Maybe. In the meantime, though, does it mean his readers are going to be teased at every “thrilling” instalment waiting for something to happen? Why should their pay money and waste their time for this dubious privilege?

    As it stands now, The Third Option is a setback for anyone paying attention to Flynn’s career. He’s not a terribly gifted writer on a technical level, so the success of his books tends to depend a lot on the plotting. Consequently, he can’t manage to hold any interest in a very average third novel. Worse; chances are that he’s managed to make anyone very indifferent to the prospect of a fourth one.

  • Tomorrow Now, Bruce Sterling

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Random House, 2002, 320 pages, C$37.95 hc, ISBN 0-679-46322-4

    Anyone who’s been following Science Fiction over the last decade knows that Bruce Sterling is The Man. Since 1992, he has produced an impressive series of solid, cosmopolitan, cutting-edge stories. He writes with a degree of originality and complexity that is seldom seen amongst his contemporaries. At a time when SF is massively retreating back on its past glories, Sterling dares to look in our current future and write delightfully energetic Science-Fiction. He’s one of the best, if not the best SF writer today.

    His latest non-fiction book, Tomorrow Now is a reflection of the abilities that have propelled him to the top. Sterling has grown up, and this book demonstrates it. Billed as “envisioning the next fifty years”, this book is more akin to a wide-ranging lecture on a variety of subject.

    It’s loosely structured around Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man” (as outlined in As You Like It) First on the list is “The Infant”, along with a discussion of the possibilities of biotechnology. Standard futurist stuff, though with an emphasis on the disturbingly sceptic feel these innovations will take. The rest of the book is as much about now as it is about tomorrow. “The Student” looks at today’s innovation in education through the Internet while “The Lover” examines technology made “lovable” through personalization. In both cases, Sterling isn’t predictive as much as he studies what is happening today.

    This impression strengthens in Chapter 4, “The Soldier”, as it reads like a Wired article describing the careers of three unorthodox military leaders. The portrait is fascinating; chances are that even though all three have lived and fought during the 1990s, you’ve never heard their names. And yet, taken together, these three show the way towards a future type of warfare. “The Soldier” may be the book’s most interesting chapter. It clearly shows where Sterling got his ideas for his previous novel Zeitgeist, uncovers a facet of recent history few of us even know about and manages to spin it in a blueprint for the next few decades.

    But Sterling also stretches his scope outside simple prediction. In “The Justice”, he discusses the growing complacency of government and becomes a political theorist. In “The Pantaloon”, he tackles economic matters and mentions his invitation to the Davos World Economic Forum with a proper degree of humility. (“If I were to cut and paste my latest 1040 tax form onto the page here, it would be far worse and more shocking that posting nude pics of myself on the Internet.” [P.216]) Finally, in “Mere Oblivion”, he muses on the environment and the dangers of global warming.

    All in all, it’s fantastic reading even if he doesn’t always deliver on what we may expect from a “book of predictions.” Tomorrow Now may meander and end up being too short, but there’s no denying that it’s a new-thought-a-minute, two-quotes-a-page peek in the mind of a genius.

    The only thing that really annoyed me about Tomorrow Now is the physical object itself. Published as a stunted hardcover scarcely bigger than a regular paperback, Tomorrow Now‘s presentation feels a lot like an attempt to camouflage a short book as something worth 40$. Granted, the calibre of the ideas contained therein is certainly a cut above the usual hardcover, but it still doesn’t make up for the perceived loss in value. I’m still glad I sent some money in Sterling’s pocket, but readers without my generous book-buying budget may want to borrow this one at the library… or wait for the paperback edition. I also hated the translucent cover and the title-less design of the dust jacket… but that’s just me.

    Despite the above caveat, I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest that this is a book that deserves to be read. Despite the often-frustrating rambling and dodgy structure, there is a lot of material here for Sterling fans, think-tanks, techno-geeks, SF writers and anyone else interested in what a fun guy like Sterling may have in mind. As he points out, “you don’t want a free author in your house” [P.230] but Tomorrow Now is the next best thing. Fans of the authors are free to ponder one thing: much as his previous non-fiction book The Hacker Crackdown marked a significant shift in his fiction, what will happen after Tomorrow Now?

  • On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington 1), David Weber

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1993, 422 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-72163-1

    I’ve been eyeing David Weber’s Honor Harrington series for a while now, feeling as if I should give it a try while simultaneously being intimidated by the series’ growing number of volumes. I kept buying the books at second-hand stores, hoping to complete the dozen-book set before diving in. But that could have taken a while. Happily, Baen neatly solved the problem with the tenth novel in the Honor Harrington series, War of Honor: The C$41 hardcover included a CD-ROM containing, yep, the whole series (and more) in electronic format. No more worries about missing volumes; I could just start reading what I had and “fill in the blanks” with the electronic version on my trusty PDA.

    First stop, then: On Basilisk Station, Honor Harrington’s first adventure.

    Who’s Honor? She’s a starship captain who, at the start of this first novel, assumes her first command, a decrepit cruiser optimistically christened Fearless. But Honor is the embodiment of her ship’s name and at the first training exercise opportunity she gets, she severely embarrasses a cocky superior by beating him at his own game.

    Mistake. Before long, she’s exiled to a trivial faraway post, where she meets an old nemesis who -in cowardly fashion- flees and leaves her to perform a wide variety of tasks with almost no assets. What others would consider impossible, Honor sees as opportunity: before long, she shapes up everything in fine fighting form. But don’t be bored yet; an enemy attack looms…

    A lot of things are obvious from On Basilisk Station: First, that it’s a classical underdog-against-all-odds story featuring a plucky heroine who deserves our unqualified admiration. Second, that it’s a direct descendant of the Horatio Hornblower naval adventure stories. Third, that’s it’s completely successful as an introductory volume to the Honor Harrington series.

    I’m hooked, no doubt about it: Weber writes honest military SF, sure, but unlike too many of his immediate colleagues, he never forgets that he’s primarily telling a story, not recreating a tactical engagement for the enjoyment of the armchair strategists in the audience. His secondary characters take a while to come in focus, but they do and Honor Harrington herself is the type of archetypical heroine worth absolute devotion. Similarities with Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan go beyond the fact that they’re both published by Baen books.

    At least Weber’s political prejudices are obvious. The evil Havenites have a policy of expansion made inevitable by “almost two T-centuries of deficit spending to shore up an increasingly insolvent welfare state.” [P.52] Tee-hee! Then there’s the not-so-good Liberals, whose dedication to maintaining a military presence on Basilisk Station is traitorously suspect. The political system in which Honor lives is adapted directly from the English’s parliamentary monarchy: a nod to Hornblower and C.S. Forrester, sure, but also a rather convenient setting for true-blood Anglo-Saxon space opera… but I’ll hold off on any potentially embarrassing comments on the ethnicity of the series until I’ve read more of it. At least the complete gender integration of Honor’s universe is a laudable assumption.

    In short, On Basilisk Station is addictive reading. I’m definitely in for the duration of the Harrington series. At one book per month (and, presumably, one review per month), I should reach War of Honor by October 2003. Stay tuned!

  • Terminal Event, James Thayer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon & Schuster, 1999, 347 pages, C$37.00 hc, ISBN 0-684-84210-6

    Don’t trust Terminal Event‘s cover blurb. It says something about an air-crash investigator fighting against colleagues who think a crash was human error. It suggests something about a battle of wit between the investigator and a mad serial bomber. It’s even more deceitful than the usual cover blurb. (Though it gets the protagonist’s name right) It’s a disservice to the book, really, because Terminal Event is a much, much better book than what the blurb may lead you to think.

    This novel opens with a harrowing scene: Narrator Joe Durant, formerly of the National Transportation Security Board, walks through a forest peppered with the aftermath of an airplane crash. Metal fragments are scattered along with human body parts as Durant quickly assesses the situation and realizes what has to be done. He barely has time to cede control to authorities before upchucking his lunch. His wife was on the flight.

    Before long, he’s back in with the NTSB. Grieving (but not too much), he helps in piecing together a theory about what happened. His is not the only theory: others ideas are floating around, and one of Terminal Event‘s rare pleasures is in tracking down some very different red herrings. In some ways, it’s an interesting dilemma: Joe’s theory isn’t sexy, but it’s his. As readers, do we want the drama of, say, a surfaced-launched missile or do we want to see our hero being proven right with a decidedly less exciting theory?

    Joe is not alone, of course. In addition to his colleagues, he’s also assigned a hard-as-nail female FBI liaison. She gets to see what he does at the NTSB; he gets to see what she does at the FBI. In one of those easy dramatic shortcuts jaded readers learn to ignore, Joe ends up being present at almost every twist and turn of three different investigations. He’s threatened, bribed, confused, decried and -surprise!- ultimately triumphant… though not in the way anyone could expect.

    There is no doubt that Terminal Event is a techno-thriller that veers very close to engineering fiction. The details about the work the NTSB performs are endlessly fascinating, but for a specific crowd. Tom Clancy fans will go nuts for the nuts-and-bolts minutia of air-crash investigations. But more casual thriller writers shouldn’t despair; Thayer is remarkably efficient in turning out accessible prose. Terminal Event passed the acid test of thrillers by making your reviewer read far too late in the night for “just one more chapter.”

    There’s a lot to like about this book, from the narrative energy to the sympathetic narrator. Even better is the book’s multiple competing plot threads, one (or none) of which may just be the solution to the whole sorry mess. Unlike other novels, Terminal Event seldom tips its hand, keeping those storylines equally compelling all the way through. Also refreshing is a light romance that never overwhelms the book, and the resolution of said romance.

    What isn’t as successful is the storyline following the narrator’s grief, which is seldom brought up and almost ends up as an incidental subplot. A long time passes during which the issue of the dead wife isn’t even brought up. The discovery of her body, for instance, is mentioned almost casually as something having happened days before. In fact, the subjective duration of the events in Terminal Event is puzzling; all the action is supposed to “fit” in ten days, but it seems considerably longer, especially during the first half of the book.

    But no matter; Terminal Event is a deeply original, constantly interesting thriller. It’s readable like few others and contains enough details about the NTSB to double as a light non-fiction article on the mindset of its investigators. Just buy it without reading the cover blurb.

  • The Bridge, John Skipp & Craig Spector

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1991, 419 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-29027-4

    A drum filled with toxic chemicals falls from a truck into a body of water. It breaks open, releasing nasty industrial waste into the wilderness. Then a horrible mutation takes place and people start to die!

    The above is the initial story trigger for EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, a delightful 2002 comedy that apes the hackneyed conventions of 1950s giant-insect B-movies. As it happens, it’s also the premise behind The Bridge, a gore-filled horror novel by John Skipp and Craig Spector. Whereas EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS is a comedy, well, there’s not much to laugh about in The Bridge —even as ludicrous as it is.

    The problems start early on in this quasi-earnest tale of environmental catastrophe. It’s hard not to giggle as a random accumulation of toxic waste somehow creates a brand-new monster. You thought that type of easy plotting went out with comic books and B-movie from the fifties, but no, Skipp and Spector seem determined to play this silly concept in a relatively straightforward manner. (Or rather as straightforward as they want, which may not be very much given the whole novel’s overblown quality.)

    Suffice to say that in a few dozen pages, our eeevil toxic dumpers are severely punished and that a toxic overmind is attacking a small town in Northeastern America. Even at this point, the level of nastiness exhibited by the authors is impressive: Characters are killed before we can even get to know them. (I’ve heard “splatterpunk” used to describe this book, but even if I can recognize a heck of a lot of splatter in The Bridge, I’m not familiar enough with the sub-genre to be comfortable in designating the novel as such.)

    But no problem; there are always more characters to feed in the good old gore-chipper. Too many of them, in fact; while Skipp & Spector need ever-expanding battalions of monster-fodder in order to tell their story, it quickly becomes apparent that none of them is going to be important enough to remember. In fact, it’s worth noting that The Bridge doesn’t have a plot as much as it has a list of victims. There is scarcely any further narrative arc than the characters discovering that the toxic blob is out to get them. No serious efforts are conducting at fighting back; there is only escape, and not a very effective escape at that.

    The cumulative effect of this realisation is a steady loss of interest in a novel that is already too scattered to be gripping. While The Bridge constantly teases us with interesting elements and the promise of hard-core horror, it never achieves critical mass.

    Another part of the problem is that Skipp and Spector try to have it both ways: First, as a serious commentary on the environment (including, I kid you not, an eighteen-pages appendix on how to be an environmentalist), but also as a novel of supernatural horror. One defuses the other in much the same way that Peter Straub’s Floating Dragon trivialized its man-made threat by putting it alongside a supernatural monster. Who even cares about pollution when zombies want to eat your brain?

    On the other hand, there’s a steadily mounting glee at seeing Skipp and Spector overturn almost every tradition in their quest to kill as many characters in the messiest ways possible. The last few pages will have even the most jaded readers go “eew” as the novel moves far, far away from the watered down simulacrum that passes as “horror” nowadays.

    But even though a good ending can redeem a lot of things, The Bridge‘s conclusion seems to stop for lack of people to kill, not out of story to tell. Heck, the real story of The Bridge begins after the last page, and the authors quit before it truly gets interesting.

    In the end, The Bridge is a half-interesting, half-frustrating novel of hard-core horror. Readers with strong stomachs might enjoy aspects of it even as the sum of all parts fails short of satisfaction. While it’s considerably nastier than “mainstream horror”, it’s equally less successful in narrative qualities. On the other hand, it’s an effective cautionary tale against the evils of toxic waste dumping… Oh, who am I kidding!? Let’s go watch EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS again.

  • Long Bomb: How the XFL became TV’s biggest fiasco, Brett Forrest

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Crown, 2002, 254 pages, C$37.95 hc, ISBN 0-609-60992-0

    The more cynical among us (your reviewer included) would like to make you believe that we live in a age where everything is controlled, calculated, test-marketed and over-designed. All of our entertainment options are manufactured to order in a society dominated by consumerism and obedience. Britney Spears is less of an artist than a marketing vision given curvaceous form. MBA-holding executives are assembling movies from pieces defined by statisticians, psychologists and market analysts. We simple-minded consumers have no chance: we can only bleat and accept what we’re given.

    In this context, the complete failure of the XFL in early 2001 is something worth celebrating. World Wresting Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) CEO Vince McMahon buddied up with NBC executive Dick Ebersol to given us a brand new football league, the XFL. Combining NBC’s sportscasting expertise with the WWF’s flair for showmanship, the XFL was supposed to be a more exciting, less expensive alternative to the tired old NFL.

    In retrospect, it’s hard to say whether this was a great or terrible idea. Certainly, NBC thought it was getting good broadcasting material for almost nothing: Founding the XFL was considerably cheaper than forking out billions for NFL licensing. Vince McMahon wanted a respectability that wrestling could never provide. Hundreds of players wanted another chance to strut their stuff in front of an audience. And maybe, just maybe, the American public could find a spot in their schedule for another sport league.

    It didn’t turn out that way.

    The first game of the XFL drew respectable numbers. Rating for subsequent games, though, melted down until the last few games, which pulled in the lowest numbers ever recorded for prime-time shows in network broadcast history —scarcely a few hundred thousand viewers across North America. Pundits, journalists and comedians skewered the new league mercilessly. The experiment was not repeated; no second season of the XFL was ever seriously considered once the ratings crashed through the floor.

    Long Bomb recounts all of the above is sarcastic glee. Brett Forrest presumably hung around the league as everything happened, and if the book doesn’t feature his own adventures (indeed, there are scenes where a gaping obscurity occupies the place where a first-person narrator should be), the narration clearly indicates someone who paid attention. Far too much of the book reads like a sardonic description of the TV newscasts, but from time to time we go behind the scenes and get a glimpse in the life of the real players in the XFL.

    The writing style has its moments, but all too often loses itself in flight of fancies that are not entirely appropriate to the subject being discussed. Still, Long Bomb is a compulsively readable account of a recently fascinating subject. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s no DVD companion featuring telecasts of what he discusses, but given the difficulties Forrest had in dealing with XFL, WWE and NBC executives, well, maybe we should just be happy that the book exists at all.

    But maybe above everything, Long Bomb is an account of a gigantic failure, one of the most spectacular miscalculation in recent memory. The XFL existed at the crossroads of sports and entertainment, and an account of its history must consider implications in both fields. In some ways, it’s a refreshing reminder that despite all the expert advice and pre-manufactured elements you can throw at a money-making venture, it can still fail as soon as no one is watching. And even gibbering football fans familiar with wrestling can choose not to watch.

    Somehow, that’s a reassuring thought.

  • Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 2002, 260 pages, C$37.95 hc, ISBN 0-385-50447-0

    The newest Chuck Palahniuk novel is here, and as you may expect, it’s a blend of weirdness, hypnotic prose, self-loathing characters and strong images. What’s new is a fascinating premise and a willingness to delve into supernatural horror.

    It starts out with a washed-up journalist investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. There is one catch, though: He knows what causes it. And it’s not anything rational: Merely reading a specific poem, a culling song (page 27 of a library book that happens to be at each victim’s bedside), will kill anyone.

    The journalist ends up memorizing the poem. Tries it on his editor. Finds that he now has the power to kill anyone by the power of his voice. It gets worse; he realizes that his bottled-up anger is so fierce that he is actually able to kill people remotely, merely by thinking the poem.

    In typical Palahniukian fashion, a blackly comedic sequence follows, as our protagonist commits a mini murder spree against everyone who annoys him. Serial killing has seldom been more amusing. It gets funnier when he gets annoyed by radio announcers.

    What’s not so amusing are the consequences of his discovery. In an hypnotically terrifying passage, (Chapter 7) Palahniuk imagines the effects of “a plague you catch through your ears.” [P.41] It’s not an entirely new idea (see, oh, David Langford’s “comp.basilisk FAQ” for a similar premise) but it’s still a good one, and Palahniuk is willing to play it for all it’s worth, not even once mentioning “memetic epidemiology”.

    Eventually realizing that he’s completely out of control, our protagonist decides to destroy all copies of the book which contains the fatal lullaby. In order to do so, he enlists the help of a realtor who specializes in haunted houses (because you can sell those again… and again… and again…), an eco-terrorist and a Wiccan girl. A motley crew, or an ultramodern nuclear family? Turns out there isn’t much of a difference.

    Killing library clerks, burning down used bookstores, scamming restaurants and sight-seeing a bit, the protagonist’s quest eventually uncovers something even more sinister, a spell-book that promises to unleash even more devastation if it falls in the wrong hands.

    Which it does.

    There’s always been a sub-theme of apocalyptic renewal in Palahniuk’s fiction (from Tyler Durden’s ultimate goal in Fight Club to the fist-fight climax of Survivor) and this fascination is magnified here. Indeed, elements of previous novels pop up here and there, like Choke‘s scamming or Invisible Monsters‘s road trip and -naturally- the hip and rhythmic prose of his entire oeuvre.

    This time, Palahniuk leaves weird-but-realistic fiction behind and imagines a warped tale of urban fantasy. Charles de Lint on acid, in one way. While Choke already showed signs of dipping in the fantastic pool, Lullaby jumps right in with magic spells and haunted houses. Add to that the strangely altered universe in which the tale takes place, and it gets a bit messy.

    But messy fun: This is probably Palahniuk’s most enjoyable novel since Survivor. Whereas Invisible Monsters was trashy fun, Lullaby has more unity and content than Choke while offering a more interesting reading experience. All the usual Palahniuk elements are there, so fans know what to expect. Newer readers, on the other hand… should expect something weird. But good.

  • The Drudge Manifesto, Matt Drudge & Julia Phillips

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    New American Library, 2000, 247 pages, C$32.99 hc, ISBN 0-451-20150-7

    I’m a news junkie. Always was, always will be.

    Can’t resist the flow of info. Plugged in every evening for the news; acute withdrawal symptoms if I can’t get my fix. Hit me, feed me, I need to know.

    Give me the latest update. News aren’t just news. They’re the most important story of our lives. Heck, news are the soap of our lives. We’re not reading about it in history books.

    This is here. Now. We’re lucky to live history.

    I know the Drudge Report. Ugly layout, monospace typeface, right-wing leanings, often sensationalist headlines. Rather doubtful authenticity.

    But it brings the news. Links to the news. Breaks the news. Drudge is on top of things as they happen.

    Drudge is a junkie like me. But whereas I’m wired, he’s superplugged in the middle of the web. He slurps the news wires and links to the interesting stuff. From time to time, he’ll uncover a presidential scandal.

    Naturally, sooner or later he’d write a book about it.

    This is it. The Drudge Manifesto. 250 pages of free-form stream-of consciousness musings on himself, conventional media, the internet and associated subjects.

    Short paragraphs. Sentence Fragments. POAs (PlentyOfAcronyms). MashedUpWords. Sweeping generalisations. Bing. Bang. Pow. J-school jargon at the speed of thought.

    This is today’s style. Bing. Bang. Boom. No time to edit. Or even use the space bar. You can always upload the corrections later.

    Drudge says he’s better than the New York Times.

    Says print media is dead.

    Says TV is dead.

    He might not believe it, but it’s his job to make us argue against it.

    Drudge says: Anyone can now be his own journalist. Publish any story. Reach the world.

    Sure.

    But not everyone deserves my belief. My attention. My eyeballs.

    I still love the CBC, state-sponsored journalism institution as it is.

    But then again, I’ve never watched FOX News.

    His manifesto is a screed against the so-called staid old institutions.

    His readers (see endnotes/links/appendices) think they’re getting the whole story. Without interference from “the staid and leftist drivel from the TV.” [P.241], they think they read something “IMPARTIAL, UNBIASED and TRUTHFUL”.

    The irony here is so thick you couldn’t cut it with a cigar.

    Drudge thinks of himself as a journalist. Does he make mistakes? He says it’s not important, because old media also makes plenty of mistakes.

    Some rationale.

    I could have fun with it, but I think I’ll just move on.

    (Don’t believe your fan-mail, Matt.)

    Drudge is not journalist. He’s a well-connected web surfer with the guts to re-print rumours people send him.

    He stands above, besides, under, outside the system.

    It doesn’t make him a superhero. He’s the spider at the center of the news web, but he would quickly starve without the flies getting caught in his net.

    Without traditional media, he’d starve to death. Without the newswires, he’d have only rumours to report. Without the attention given to him, the rumours would go someplace else. His much-lauded revelations about the Lewinski affair are diminished in the telling; the story would have gone out anyway. Just maybe a few hours later.

    If your main reputation is that you crack stories by minutes, you may want to re-think your line of business.

    We can’t have all Drudges and no journalists; no one would be able (understand; paid, trained, given the time) to present the rough draft of history that is journalism.

    But let’s not be too dismissive of Drudge. He may be bombastic and overly confident in the Internet, but he’s useful. As an overseer of media. A check and a balance on another set of checks and balances. When he points out that the convergence of media acquisitions can’t be good, he’s speaking the whole truth.

    At his most lucid (see Appendix A, the transcription of an interview at the rather sceptical National Press Club), Drudge is a knowledgeable media pundit.

    But even Drudge can’t fight a bigger force than old media; time.

    2000 seems so far away, barely twenty-five months after its last few days. As of January 2003, we’ve got global terrorism, a moron in the White House, a right wing left to curtail civil liberties in the name of homeland security and a bunch of civilian hawks anxious to start a war without UN approval.

    One president wants to have sex with curvy young women. The other wants to bomb a foreign country for no good reason at all.

    Guess which one I identify with.

    Yes, 2000 seems so far ago. And among other things, Drudge now has to content with a powerful opponent.

    It’s called news.google.com

    It spiders thousands of recognized news sources, sees what’s hot and presents the most popular material in a single page. Without fuss. Without bias. Heck, without human intervention, because everything is run by algorithms.

    You may be obsolete, Drudge.

    What you do, the computer can do too.

    But the computer can’t be a journalist.

    Maybe that’s your way out.

  • Red Rabbit, Tom Clancy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 2002, 618 pages, C$39.99 hc, ISBN 0-399-14870-1

    It’s no accident if Tom Clancy has decided to incorporate under the name “Jack Ryan Ltd.” His fictional protagonist has starred in no less than eight best-selling novels since 1984 (with cameo roles in two others) as well as four blockbuster films. This is nothing compared to some mystery writers who are still churning out series novels decades after inventing their lead protagonist (Robert B. Parker and his “Spencer”, for instance), but unlike them, Clancy has been willing to make his characters evolve. From a humble intelligence analyst in The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan has become, post-Debt of Honor, nothing less than the President of the United States. After dealing with what was almost a nuclear war in The Bear and the Dragon, there isn’t much left for Ryan to do: Step down —or die heroically.

    While that particular story might be told in Clancy’s next opus, [September 2003: Alas, no] that hasn’t prevented him from squeezing out one more Ryan adventure out of his imagined universe. With Red Rabbit, he takes us back sometime between Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October to tell us of his involvement in countering an assassination attempt on the Pope.

    Now this attempt is part of the historical record; in May 1981, Pope John Paul II was severely wounded by a Turkish terrorist named Mehmet Ali Agca, who was using a weapon obtained in Bulgaria. Since then, various rumours have credited the KGB with this attempt. Red Rabbit is a peek behind the Iron Curtain, a fictionalization of the events surrounding this event.

    It’s an unusual novel for Clancy; an attempt at meshing historical fact and fiction (he has written “historical” novel before –Without Remorse-, but it didn’t attempt to integrate itself with any known historical fact), a simpler plot than the previous novels (notice how the book is “merely” six hundred-odd pages long) and a curiously non-violent book too: The only shots fired are part of the historical record, and the body count equals exactly one —and that takes place off-screen at the very very end of the book.

    It’s also unusual in that it’s Clancy’s purest “spy” story so far. Whereas The Cardinal of the Kremlin contained a substantial touch of spycraft, this novel is packed with what feels like authentic descriptions of real-life spy stuff. Even the low thrill-factor of Red Rabbit works at evoking real-world danger here; By toning down the spectacular, Clancy makes even a simple playground conversation seem tense. Surely real spies do not behave like James Bond!

    Instead, we’re treated to a historical drama made more prescient with the benefit of twenty year’s hindsight and declassified material. The role of the papacy in the fall of communism is now fairly well-documented, and Clancy can draw upon these new revelations to solidify his story.

    On the other hand, he can’t resist the temptation to give his protagonists almost perfect foresight. Jack Ryan is almost cocky when he confidently asserts that the Soviet Empire will soon crumble upon itself. Other more serious anachronisms abound, mixing dates between 1980 and 1982. As a teenage Transformers fan, I was rather shocked to catch Clancy referencing the cartoon series at least three years before it was aired. Gotcha, Tom!

    This laziness doesn’t stop there: on a sentence-per-sentence level, Red Rabbit is as sloppily edited as Clancy’s latest few novels. Anachronistic expressions abound, and so does a certain repetition of terms (most egregiously the infamous “pshrink”), though nowhere as bad as in The Bear and the Dragon. I have noted previously that Clancy needs an editor who will not be swayed by his best-selling status, and this is still true; you could lop at least one hundred pages off this novel without undue harm.

    On the other hand, the novel as it stands right now is still fun for Clancy fans or spy novel buffs. The meticulous description of spycraft establishes an engrossing atmosphere of authenticity. While this is in no way an essential Clancy novel nor even a particularly well-integrated one (unlike Patriot Games, no mentions of the events in Red Rabbit are ever uttered anywhere in the series, which is unusual for Clancy.), it’s a pleasant read, certainly a better one than any of Clancy’s sharecropped ghost-written novels. It’ll do until Ryan’s next (and probably last) adventure.

  • The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New, Margot Rosenberg & Bern Marcowitz

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 2002, 190 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-30067-0

    I love books. I really do. I could go on and on about how many books I read and own and cherish and how I once almost went over a table to stop someone from dog-earing a book, but just take my word for it; I love books.

    The first time I saw The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New in bookstores, I knew it was something I had to get. Sagacious advice about cleaning, keeping and repairing books? Hey, I need this stuff. What Rosenberg and Marcowitz have put together is nothing short of a manifesto for serious bibliophiles. Inside its delightfully retro-looking dust jacket, there is enough advice to allow any book-lover to put his or her own library back into shape.

    These two booksellers have plenty of real-world experience and their delightfully practical wisdom amply demonstrates it. Wrapped in a commonsense prose, reading this is a lot like spending a few hours with two quirky librarians with a lot of stories to tell. Take notes, because you won’t find this advice anywhere else. Most of it is simple common sense, but the rest is illuminating. This is a Complete Idiot’s Guide to Book Stewardship by another name.

    This is a book that goes well beyond simple how-to advice. Some its best passages are simply about books. What they mean, what they can do, why we love them so much and why someone who is not kind to books is someone who doesn’t deserve any pity. Serious bibliophiles will read this book and feel their spirits soar through the roof of their library; it’s nothing short of a love letter to their favourite subject. There’s plenty of quotable material here, and twice as many passages to reflect upon. Expect to re-read passages every so often.

    The best complaint anyone can make about this book is that it’s not long enough. It’s a shame to see it end. What’s more serious, though, is the lack of illustrations. It would have been useful to be shown some of the repair methods explained here, compare before-and-after images and quickly associate specialized terms with their visual equivalents. The authors spend so much time extolling the visual, odoriferous and tactile pleasures of books, it’s a shame to see at least the visual aspect given short thrift.

    I must also confess that, as a cat-person (or, more accurately, a no-pets kind of person), the authors’ constant references to dogs, dogs and more dogs got a bit tiresome. Granted, their “real” job is selling dog books (go visit them at www.dogbooks.com). It is also true that this is, in fact, their own book (if I’m not happy, I just have to write my own). Still, it gets somewhat ironic to see them grumble against ill-mannered book handlers while scrupulously avoiding any mention of volume-chewing dogs. I have no doubts that their own dogs are particularly well-trained in this regard… but such is not the case with all pets and kids. On the other hand, this eccentricity gradually becomes charming, reinforcing the very human aspect of this book.

    And ultimately, this is what The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New is all about; the connection between books and humans (canines not excluded). Beyond the cleaning-up of books, the careful storage of volumes and the ethics of book-lending, this is about the happy life of bibliophiles, the peace of reading, the beauty of written thoughts and the satisfaction of communicating. In short, it’s an essential purchase for anyone who loves books.