Book Review

  • Unearthing Atlantis, Charles Pellegrino

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1991 (2001 reprint), 355 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-81044-1

    The legend of Atlantis has fascinated many over centuries, all the way from Plato to us. Could it be possible for an advanced civilisation to disappear, just like that? Through the rumors, the stories, the myth, what is the true story that inspired Atlantis, if there was one? Are there any lessons to be learned from the fall of Atlantis?

    In Unearthing Atlantis, Charles Pellegrino applies his considerable archaeological experience, writing talent and gift for vulgarization to give us an overview of what we think we know, at this moment, about the Minoan civilization, the buried city of Thera and how it all ties into the myth of Atlantis.

    It doesn’t stop there, of course. Pellegrino is pathologically incapable of sticking to one subject and Unearthing Atlantis takes delight in rummaging through Science’s entire bag of tricks. A gifted polymath, Pellegrino can discourse as easily on anti-matter rockets, archaeology or palaeontology. The result is unique, and a testimony to how much fun the pure acquisition of knowledge can be, both for the scientists and the average readers.

    This, unfortunately, can have an unfortunate scattering effect on the unity of the book’s structure. Unearthing Atlantis goes one way, then another and then in yet another direction. Fans of the author’s previous books already know this, but this can be disconcerting for a new reader. Fortunately, a complete index will help if you want to track down specific passages quickly.

    It’s not as if your attention will wander, even if Pellegrino’s narrative does: the stories he has to tell are fascinating. From the memorable bio portrait of the driven archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos to the “time gate” (an intellectual device possibly borrowed from Pellegrino’s own scarce Time Gate book, which I haven’t yet read.), here’s a vulgarizator who knows how to communicate the passion of science and the excitement of discovery.

    Pellegrino fans will appreciate that this book once more ties into his pet obsessions to a degree or another—most notably the Titanic wreck. This 2001 re-edition of Unearthing Atlantis is touted on the author’s web site as the “uncensored version”, which probably refers to the carbon-dating controversy in Chapter 11. (I believe that it is in Return to Sodom and Gomorrah that Pellegrino explains the highly adverse reaction of Egyptologists to even the suggestion that some of their canon might not match with independent carbon dating.) Fun personal anecdotes pepper the narrative, from Pellegrino’s run-in with Prince Charles’ security forces (an event casually mentioned in his novel Flying to Valhalla) to an amusing desert drama:

    ”…one Egyptian scholar became so disturbed by news that some of her pottery dates may have to be rewritten that she began to confide in me some chillingly detailed suicide fantasies. Since I was depending on this woman to get me out of the desert alive, I decided not to press the issue. As far as I can recall, she is the only person ever to have succeeded in shutting me up.” [P.265]

    In short, it’s another wonderful book by Pellegrino and a perfect example of good scientific vulgarization. Even as far as Atlantis is concerned, Pellegrino is careful to play down evidence of catastrophic destruction in the end of the Minoan civilization, noting that the empire was already showing signs of collapse.

    Still, it’s a lot of fun to speculate about a relatively advanced civilization, ready to spring forward yet destroyed by a freak geological event. Otherwise, how different would have been history? Might we already be standing on an extra-solar planet by now? Maybe. Who knows? With enough “What if?”s, it’s easy to make the legend of Atlantis stretch all the way from the past to our future.

  • Into the Storm, Tom Clancy & General Fred Franks Jr.

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 1997, 531 pages, C$37.50 hc, ISBN 0-399-14236-3

    I’ve said it before, but it’s an axiom worth reprinting again: Publishing is a funny business. You can sell a lot of unlikely books if you have the right hook, and the quality of the product rarely has anything to do with the end result. Neither does reader enjoyment; you can slide and dice the numbers any way you want, but there aren’t very many rational answers for the wild best-selling success of Stephen Hawkins’ math-heavy A Brief History. Many have uncharitably suggested that it was a book that was more interesting to display than to read, and that’s not far from the truth. Not many people have read A Brief History of Time all the way through, but many poseurs proudly include it in their personal library.

    In much the same vein, General Fred Franks’ Into the Storm could have easily been yet another of those dry military history textbooks: Published by a specialized printing press, advertised in a few small magazines, bought by a few hundred universities and overwhelmingly invisible to the general public. Regardless of the quality of the work, this would have been a hard-core military book for a small audience of military buffs. Or, even worse, an unpublished manuscript.

    But in our universe, Tom Clancy stepped in.

    Or, should I say, best-selling techno-thriller author Tom Clancy stepped in. He (or someone else) thought it might be a good idea to co-author a series of non-fiction books with professional military personnel. Into the Storm is, reportedly, the first book in this series.

    In a sense, everyone should come away happy from this experience. Clancy gets to work with interesting people and acquires a considerable amount of credibility as an expert in the field. The co-authors get an experienced wordsmith and vulgarizator. Oh, and a best-seller is certain.

    And that’s the really surprising thing about Into the Storm. It’s a jargon-heavy pure military text. It describes the history of mechanized infantry from the Vietnam War to the Gulf War. It describes, in overwhelming detail, how ground troops prepared and fought in the Gulf War. It’s a biography of General Fred Franks. It’s a summary of fifteen years’ worth of changes in the US Army. It’s a primer on how to fight a modern war with modern weapons. In short, it’s not beach reading. And yet it was published, massively marketed and probably bought by thousands of readers who were probably expecting another Clancy pot-boiler. Gotcha!

    It’s not even a bad book, though it definitely has its limitations. For even the moderately knowledgeable military buff, it’s often dry reading. While the details are exhaustive, they’re usually not presented in a compelling way; there’s a limit to how excitingly you can describe transit operations and force preparation. Some of it is even dull beyond belief. You almost have to be a professional military analyst to enjoy the full book. There’s also an additional annoyance in that Franks seems to be using passages of Into the Storm to answer Norman Schwarzkopf’s criticism in his autobiography It Doesn’t Take a Hero. Naturally, readers who aren’t familiar with the previous book might not care at all.

    But don’t let that blind you to the interesting sections of Into the Storm. At its best, it’s a clear description of the overhaul of the US Army after the scars left by Vietnam. It’s a rather good autobiography of a professional military man. It’s occasionally a good description of the Gulf War. From time to time, you’ll even uncover a nugget or two of fascinating military trivia. Its grasp of the real-world military chain of command and logistics is also unparalleled in widely-available literature.

    But if you’re not a dedicated military buff, goodness, don’t pick up Into the Storm expecting another easy read by Mr. Clancy. It all too often happens that the publishing industry fools relatively smart people in buying total crap, but in this case it’s fascinating to see the complete opposite—the marketing industry managing to convince a large audience to buy over their heads. Now that Into the Storm has hit the remainder stacks, you can find out for yourself if you’ve got the mettle for 500+ pages of hard-core military jargon.

  • Cradle of Saturn, James P. Hogan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1999, 421 pages, C$35.50 hc, ISBN 0-671-57813-8

    James P. Hogan has always been a very peculiar writer, constantly dogging boffo premises with botched characters and limp execution. In a sense, he’s the incarnation of everything that’s good and bad about hard Science-Fiction with his unique extrapolation of original ideas mixed with an appalling inability to write. Cradle of Saturn is a frustrating novel that’s highly representative of his body of work.

    In a few words, Cradle of Saturn is yet another novel of implacable celestial catastrophe. The late nineties -driven by pre-millennial fever, the intellectual impact of the Schumacher-Levy comet on Jupiter or simply synchronicity- were filled of such stories on a variety of media: ARMAGEDDON, DEEP IMPACT, the TV miniseries “Asteroid”, Yvonne Navaro’s ludicrous Final Impact, etc… It wouldn’t be fair to criticize Hogan, however, for being unoriginal given the mood of the times. (He himself even bemoans his unfortunate timing on his web site)

    For one thing, he’s far more innovative in his choice of celestial body: Rather than hand-wave a collision between two rocks in the asteroid belt, Hogan postulates as-yet unknown planetary mechanism to extract a planetoid out of Jupiter. (the moniker “Athena” is inevitable) Before anyone can say “Uh-oh, not again”, Athena is lined up in a game of planetary snooker to send Earth in the corner pocket.

    The first half of Cradle of Saturn is its most embarrassing from a literary point of view. Characters have little meetings to hurls reams of expeditionary material at each other, nods gravely and then rush off to other expeditionary meetings. Our hero, Landen Keene, is a maverick engineer who only wants to build cool rockets without being hampered by a stunningly unimaginative government. (Stop me if you’ve read that one before.) For some strange reason, though, he seems to be surrounded by people who think that conventional scientific dogma is wrong on a number of subject. And for some other reason, the rest of the scientific community is a bunch of retarded morons who’ll do their best to ignore new evidence.

    Aside from the cliché characters, the cheap and constant “they laughed at Galileo!” discourse and the atrocious integration of cool ideas in a weak narrative, this half of the novel is actually quite interesting. Hogan’s science is far-fetched, but unusual enough to make us pay attention. His rant on the improbability of dinosaurs alone will be enough to make even the hardened skeptics very curious about alternate explanations. But the real argument of the book is about celestial mechanics, the formation of planets, the impact of near-misses on the atmosphere, the strangeness of our universe and scientific evidence hidden deep in our myths and religious texts.

    By now, readers familiar with recent pseudo-science might recall a similar theme of thought in Immanuel Velikovsky’s widely-debunked work. (Worlds in Collision, a staple of the sixties’ new-age fad) Given Hogan’s fascination for weird science (again, please refer to his web site), it’s unsurprising that he’d set up a premise suitable for a rematch. His arguments are vigorous and clever. He even conspicuously avoids any mention of Velikovsky apart from the novel’s dedication and stacks the deck with convincing fictional arguments. SF is a rational game of “what-if?” and Hogan plays it very well. Experience Hard-SF readers will read this section with glee and ignore the flaws.

    The second half of the novel, alas, isn’t nearly as good. Athena hits, most people dies and our heroes are on a mission to escape Earth. While one can temporarily forget the inherent elitism in letting most of the planet die to save a few valorous heroes, the problem is that when he’s not being intellectually stimulating, Hogan doesn’t have a whole set of narrative skills to work with. The latter action-oriented half of Cradle of Saturn is trite, long and boring. Rather than end on a triumphant success, Hogan’s novel ends on an mixed note of shameful escape and exasperating hypocrisy.

    Hard-SF fans might want to tolerate the flaws and savour the ideas. Others should be warned that there are more satisfying novels out there.

    [July 1998: James P. Hogan fans (and non-fans) already know that he’s not a very accomplished stylist. They might have a surprise with Realtime Interrupt, which is easily his best book yet. A tale of virtual realities that brings back memories of quasi-Dick-ian paranoia, Realtime Interrupt also takes the time to mull over various aspects of Artificial Intelligence. Corporate infighting is mixed up with mature romance and the result is slow to revv up, but worth the wait. It’s a shame that most of the first half of the book is fairly obvious to even the average reader; the last third gets better as it goes on. The climax is vivid. Readers disappointed by Hogan in various outings might want to check this one out.]

  • The Judgement, William J. Coughlin

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 1997, 424 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-312-96244-4

    A courtroom drama element which drives me nuts is how attorneys can spend months of their time on single cases. How their lives can revolve around a single client from sunup to sundown. While this may very well be true for corporate lawyers or Johnnie Cochran Jr., most lawyers are usually stuck dividing their time between multiple competing priorities.

    While I’ll be the first to acknowledge that my reference pool in crime fiction is very shallow, William J. Coughlin’s The Judgement is the first novel I’ve read that convincingly represent the life of a small-town attorney in what seems to be a convincingly realistic fashion, complete with glamorous and boring clients, big and small cases. Heck, The Judgement even features two strong parallel cases that don’t even relate to each other!

    It is first and foremost a novel of character. The narrator, Charley Sloan is an ex-big-shot attorney. Once one of Detroit’s judicial stars, Sloan hit the bottle once too often and found himself sliding down the social scale. Now, years later, he has re-established himself in a small town, away from the spotlights and comfortably sober. As The Judgement begins, Sloan is happy, solvent and engaged in a good relationship, yet slightly bored. Excitement walks in his office in the form of Mark Conroy, a top Detroit policeman under fire from accusations of corruption. Sloan is warned that high-level political corruption might be involved. He takes the challenge. In the next pages, he’ll be bugged, threatened and bribed to drop the case.

    His biggest challenge, however, comes from another direction: In his small quiet town, a serial murderer strikes, and young children are the target. His girlfriend is on the case, but it’s Sloan who will be most affected.

    In addition to these two cases, Sloan has to account, as a small-town attorney, of a variety of other cases, serious and not-so-serious. His narration is clear, amusing but not without tense segments. Sloan gets to interrogate witnesses, hack the law, call in a few favours and generally give us a good time.

    The Judgement is an admirable crime thriller, told with crisp economy and considerable skill. The story moves well and makes for compulsive reading. The whodunit is not particularly difficult to figure out, but don’t worry: The book’s most memorable moments are character-driven, whether it’s quirky supporting characters or a personal depiction of a major lapse back in addiction. If nothing else, The Judgement gives a convincing look in the inner working and meaning of addiction support group. Among other things.

    Interestingly enough, while fact-checking this review on Amazon’s entry for this novel, I found a note by someone claiming to be Coughlin’s son, alleging that The Judgement was posthumously written by a ghostwriter and not by Coughlin, who died before the book was published. Internal evidence shows that the novel itself is copyrighted “1997, Ruth Coughlin”, but further Internet searches don’t show any other supporting material. While I’m not discounting the statement, it doesn’t really matter; The Judgement is a fine novel, ghost-written or not. Worth a read, anyway.

  • The Big Book of Scandal!, Jonathan Vankin et al.

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Paradox Press, 1997, 191 pages, C$20.95 tpb, ISBN 1-56389-358-4

    Once in a while, the vagaries of fate shine upon the jaded book reviewer and a chance encounter with an oddball title proves to be a ray of light in an otherwise dreary reading regimen. For your faithful critic, the latest of those serendipitous accidents is Paradox Press’s The Big Book of Scandal!, a wonderful comic book that stand high above most of the non-fiction read recently.

    The Big Book of Scandal! is a collection of fifty-odd comic strips (ranging from one to six pages), each telling one of the twentieth century’s best-known scandals. (Or, in the case of the O.J. Simpson trial, a twelve-page two-parter describing the period before and during the trial) Each comic strip is drawn by a different artist, but all are written by the same Jonathan Vankin, who does an impressive job of condensing together oodles of material in one accessible but reasonably exact account. The account of the Irangate scandal, for instance, does a splendid job at explaining a remarkably complex business in an entertaining fashion.

    After a succinct but clever introduction, The Big Book of Scandals! starts off amusingly enough with a section on Hollywood scandals. The standout piece here is “The Scandal that Sank a Studio”, a wonderful and hilarious six-page exposé on the disastrous making of Elizabeth Taylor’s CLEOPATRA. Other good pieces talk about Ingrid Bergman, Elvis Presley, Woody Allen, Heidi Fleiss and the “Hollywood Bad Boys”. Most of these stories are good shadenfreude material, especially given the personal -often scabrous- nature of the scandals. Good fun, really.

    An edge of bitterness begins to creep in the second section, in which we cover miscellaneous celebrity scandals. Tonya Harding, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, the English Monarchy and Michael Jackson all get their dues—plus the inevitable O.J. Simpson. Here, financial impropriety vie with more scabrous indiscretions as the source of scandals. While it may be entertaining to read about a preacher being caught paying prostitutes, it’s not as funny to read about them bilking thousands of people out of their money. And it definitely rankles to see someone famous walk away with murder. (This Factoid book might be “100% true”, but don’t make the mistake to assume that it’s 100% biais-free!)

    As the book progresses in its third section about crooked politicians, the light humor of the book’s first half is gradually replaced by a merciless sarcasm. While a Hollywood star caught with his pants down might be cause for a prude chuckle, politicians are messing around on the taxpayer’s dime and the public’s trust. Vankin’s treatment of Watergate, Irangate, the Anita Hill episode, the Kennedy Legacy or the S&L Bailout are straight-out chainsaw jobs, clearly explaining exactly what was so wrong about them. The biting humor only drives the stake even further.

    But wait; the worse is yet to come. “Dirty Business” is the angriest part of the book, detailing such scandals as John DeLorean, Michael Milken, Robert Maxwell, Lockheed, Ford Pintos, Love Canal and Thalidomide. Some of it so dirty that you’ll end up thinking that a bullet through the head of some of these people might be too generous, whereas a daily knee-capping might be just about adequate. Here, the comic form pushes exactly the right buttons in order to make us sit up and take notice. The Thalidomide segment is a model of clear and direct vulgarization, complete with a forgotten hero (Dr. Frances Kelsey) and criminal corporate behavior.

    Any book which causes a strong emotional reaction has to be commended: The Big Book of Scandals! sneaks up on you with laughter and then hits you with pure rage. The art is excellent (with particular kudos to artist Lennie Mace for the Thalidomide segment) and the writing is a marvel of concision. The Big Book of Scandal! is well worth tracking down.

    Finally, g’darn it, don’t be prejudiced about a “comic book”: In a month where I’ve read such diverse graphical works as Ghost World, Crisis on Infinite Earth and Alien: Stalker, The Big Book of Scandal not only shows that a “comic book” can be as good as equivalent pure-text non-fiction, but can even be better.

  • The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Reading Group, Patrick Sauer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Alpha, 2000, 359 pages, C$24.95 tpb, ISBN 0-02-863654-6

    Even though I’ve been avidly lurking in bookstores for most of my adult life, I still consistently manage to be delighted at some of the oddball books I can find. A trip through the cookbook section will reveal untapped areas of taste (and ever-narrower demographic segments) I never suspected. The self-help section will reveal serious widespread emotional problems I hadn’t even imagined. The biography section will make me discover hitherto-unknown famous persons. There’s always something new and interesting in bookstores. If ever I win the lottery, keep the million dollars; I want an unlimited expense account at Chapters.

    Can you say “bilbiofreak”? I knew you could.

    In many ways, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Reading Group is a book that I couldn’t resist. No, I have no intention of starting (or even joining) a reading group, but the very idea that such a book deserved to exist was simply too delicious to pass up. Plus, hey, it was heavily discounted.

    The first chapter of this Idiot’s Guide quickly establishes that the book has been written in an alternate universe. (“Does it seem that every time you turn around lately, another friend or acquaintance has joined a reading group? Everyone seems to be in on it.” [P.1]) This isn’t necessarily a bad thing -even though I’d like to emigrate there- given that Sauer seems to be writing in terms of “the ideal reading group” rather than our own humdrum lives. Is the CIGSRG escapist literature? Maybe.

    It certainly sounds so when you start reading some of Sauer’s recommended titles for reading. All the classics are there, and then some. He doesn’t recommend very many books published in the past twenty years, though. As pointed out in Chapter 10, gender balance isn’t something you’ll find in reading groups, which tend to skew heavily towards women for a variety of reasons. The net effect, for a Techno/SF genre geek like me is a selection of recommended books that I find respectable, if utterly boring. Sauer even muddles in my genres of predilection in Chapter 16 (The title of the chapter being, I kid you not, “Oh, the Horror… the Horror”) and the selection in my well-known SF arena is rather dry and stuffy; I count only one novel (out of 19) from the nineties, and that’s Michael Crichton’s 1990 Jurassic Park. The rest is remarkably er… unexciting.

    In producing a respectable book for everyone, Sauer might be a touch too conservative. While I can’t expect him to recommend Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club to everyone (I would, but then again that’s just me), his overall choices tend to promote elusive canon-quality rather than enjoyment, which would seem to be a crucial element in a book club for non-readers. On the other hand, it’s hard to read the CIGSRG without wanting to run to the library to borrow books yet unread. Plus, who can reasonably argue against reading the classics?

    Sauer definitely fares better when detailing the mechanics of starting a book club. How to recruit members, how to organize meetings, how to deal with difficult members and situations are all covered in witty detail. Heck, the chapter on why to join a book club alone (“Chapter 1: To Read of not to Read?”) reaffirmed my own bibliomaniac tendencies. I’m not so sure about his main sales pitch (“Reading Groups: Singles Bars for the Next Century”), especially given the shocking lack of social tips about intra-group dating!

    Well, never mind that. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Reading Group is definitely a curious book, with many uses and purposes besides the titular activity. As a reading recommendation list, it’s not everything for everyone, but it should help broaden most literary horizons. It’s mostly a book for book-lovers. You know who you are.

  • The Frank Collection, Jane and Howard Frank

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Paper Tiger, 1999, 112 pages, C$36.95 tpb, ISBN 1-85585-732-4

    I firmly believe that everyone should allow themselves one good expensive obsession. While you’re welcome to pick up heroin addiction if that strikes your fancy, my own Expensive Obsession is SF/Fantasy art books. At my own modest level of income, the decision to drop $35 or (much) more on art books is not inconsequent, hence my own measure of “Expensive”. The important part, though, is that these books please me. They’re gorgeous to look at, they make interesting conversation pieces, they don’t devalue much… in short they’re close to the ideal art investment for someone in my income bracket. In the past ten years, I’ve acquired nearly twenty-five of these books (Whelan, Burns, Eggleton, etc…), and I’m not planning on stopping any time soon.

    My own efforts are very modest, though, compared to Jane and Howard Frank. They collect the artwork itself! As explained in the introduction to The Frank Collection art-book, this husband-and-wife team was able to transform a common fascination for SF&F artwork in an impressive collection, currently exhibited in their gigantic multi-level house. This art-book is a sampler of the wonders of SF&F art, a personal testimony on the joys of art collecting and a tour through one house whose decor belongs in glossy magazines.

    It’s obvious, page after page, how much the Howards love SF&F art. They speak with reverence about famous genre artists and how lucky they were to be able to buy one of their pieces for their collection. They offer anecdotes on how they acquired some paintings, and some all-too-rare commentary on specific artworks. The after-word even discusses their conception of “stewardship” for artwork, in that they don’t own a painting as much as they have custody of it for a while. You can easily see the Franks as modern art patrons, an impression confirmed by learning in the second half of the book that they are now privately commissioning artwork! It’s a fascinating progression, from simple fans to active contributor to the state of the art.

    An average chump like me can only gawk at some of the incredible art that the Franks have assembled together. Covers of books that I own, covers I have seen re-printed in other art-books, classic covers from Golden-Era magazines… the Franks have it all. The only proper response is to be amazed. (You might ask where the money comes from, but there are a few mentions of Frank being an electronics business owner.)

    With this richness of content, it’s only normal to complain that the book is a bit on the thin side. A more serious complaint, however, is that we get only six pictures of the inside of their house. I suppose that security concerns might have deterred them from including more, but really, given that they spend a suitable fraction of their narrative speaking about how good this or that picture looks when place a certain way, well, it would be decent for them to give us a glimpse of the arrangement. After all, we can see more of their artwork reprinted elsewhere… but this is the book about their house and their collection.

    Still, I’m most grateful for The Frank Collection. Not only at the chance for a glimpse at this “showcase of the world’s finest fantastic art”, but also at the mind of two people who are undoubtedly the world’s best collectors of SF&F art. Their enthusiasm is palpable. On some level, they sort of validate by own fixation for the field, even in a diluted form.

    And that’s not even considering the perverse value of being able to point to other people with a far more expensive Expensive Obsession.

  • The Price of Power, James W. Huston

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1999, 503 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-73160-6

    I suppose that it was just a matter of time until someone thought about producing a hybrid thriller including elements of both military fiction and courtroom drama. You may pick James W. Huston’s The Price of Power expecting a political thriller (it’s certainly marketed as such), but it proves to be something a bit more diverse than that.

    The story picks up in media res, as terrorists take a family hostage and an admiral is put in handcuffs. I hadn’t read Huston’s previous Balance of Power, so the initial setup seems awfully busy. “Hey, there’s another book’s worth of stuff in there” I thought, before figuring out that there was indeed another book out there. Ironically, some of the previous novel’s material seems a bit forced when you don’t have the context, such as the physical wounds suffered by the protagonist.

    The plot that gradually emerges is a power contest between Congress and the President, one that will be fought through two separate court battles. The President is impeached, a court martial takes place, marines are asked to stand by and terrorists attack.

    It wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable if it wasn’t for Jim Dillon, our endearingly clever protagonist. He’s the type of smart-alecky hero who would be insufferable in real-life, but infuses this novel with enough interest to see us through. Dillon is a legal hacker of sorts; he manages to find hidden tricks in the U.S. Constitution and exploits them to maximum effect. The Price of Power is a journey of sort for him; he’ll quit his job and go out on a limb to do what he thinks is right, possibly losing everything in the process. Though happenstance, he will find himself prosecuting one of the biggest constitutional cases in the history of the United States. Not only does he come out of his with his honour intact, but he even manages to get the girl in the process!

    Dillon is one of the reasons why, in the end, the legal manoeuvrings in The Price of Power end up being much more interesting than the actual military firefights. All the SEALs fighting for America in this novel are as professional as we’d like them to be, but that doesn’t leave a lot of place for drama. Dillon, on the other hand, is a young man clearly out of his element. While the SEALs are pretty much going to win no matter what when faced with disorganized terrorist forces, Dillon can only depend on his cleverness and legal skills to find the quick trick to save his case. His adversaries are far more dangerous… and then there’s something about courtrooms that just compels dramatic interest. Whatever the reason, The Price of Power finds its groove in the legal suspense, not the military action. Some of the latter could have been cut without undue harm to the novel.

    It helps considerably that Huston’s writing is clear and to the point. What doesn’t work as well is part of his overall premise. Sure, the President of the United States has the responsibility to protect the citizens of his country against all dangers, but does that mean he can be impeached if he refuses to use military force? It sounds a lot like right-wing rhetoric and probably is, but Huston does only a fair job at exploring these issues. Some of it simply sounds silly: “Are you a pacifist, Mr. President?”

    No matter; I found myself unexpectedly captivated by Jim Dillon and The Price of Power, reading a bit too late in the night just to see what would happen next. While it would be a bit much to claim that The Price of Power is anything more than simply a good thriller, it does deliver the goods splendidly. It wouldn’t do to ask much more than that.

    [November 2002: Balance of Power is indeed the setup. Though it’s not mandatory reading, it does add a lot to the story and proves to be a quick enjoyable read, even to those who have read the second volume. Ironically enough, the flaws and strength of the first volume are almost identical to its sequel: Great protagonist, excellent legal hacking, but boy do things get boring whenever we’re dealing with the military side of things.]

  • Gideon, Russell Andrews (Peter Gethers & David Handler)

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ballantine, 1999, 466 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-43478-1

    By now, the beginning of the 21st century, the formula of the typical thriller is well-known and highly unlikely to change: One lone man gradually discovers a terrible secret for which unknown forces are prepared to kill. The hero is cut off from his usual sources of support, often framed for crimes he didn’t commit, sent in hiding where he will discover unlikely allies and eventually manages to blow open the lid of a grandiose conspiracy. It’s a formula that has been proved over and oven again. When it’s well-done, it can hold the attention of even the most jaded writers.

    Such is the case with Gideon, a standard thriller that succeeds on the strength of a pair of sympathetic characters, some unexpected twists, a semi-realistic conclusion and solid writing.

    The narrative begins with pure wish-fulfillment for many struggling authors: Protagonist Carl Granville, a novice novelist, is secretively commissioned by a high-powered editor to write a romanced political biography. What he finds is shocking, a tale of infanticide that seems to implicate a high-ranking member of the American government. For Carl, it’s a good job. But it soon turns ugly as his editor and his girlfriend are both killed. His attempts to track down the publisher of his phantom book are unsuccessful. Pretty soon, he’s framed for both murders and sent on the run in an effort to find out the truth.

    There isn’t much there that’ new or innovative, but the devil is in the details, and most of Gideon’s appeal rests on the actual nuts-and-bolts of the novel. Carl is fully realized as a completely sympathetic character. Unlike so many thriller heroes who “just happen” to have SEAL training, Carl has believable strength and endearing weaknesses. He doesn’t act too much like an idiot (a typical flaw in thriller protagonists) and is adequately bewildered whenever strange things happen to him. In short, he’s a perfect stand-in for most readers.

    There are a few interesting twists, of course, such as the early death of a few supporting characters we might have expected to stick around longer. For some reason, the authors manage to inject some energy in well-known stock situations. The protagonist’s quest for truth often looks like a series of audacious long-shots, but he manages to overcome all obstacles with cleverness and luck. One particularly tense scene in a Mississippi-area forest had me wondering “How is he ever going to get out of that one?”

    Alas, the villains aren’t nearly as good: Oh, they’re menacing all right—they kill with relish and expertise. But in the end, they’re just the usual evil rich businessmen, sadistic henchmen and power-hungry politicians. In fact, the most memorable thing about any of the villains is the ridiculously contrived identity of one of them, the type of thing that makes one sigh in exasperation at the unnecessary twist.

    One thing that “Andrews” does manage to handle quite well is the resolution of the intrigue. Most conspiracy thrillers would like you believe that going to the media with irrefutable proof, killing the leader or exacting a taped confession would stop everything right then and there. Gideon is a bit more realistic, with a carefully orchestrated campaign to stop everything, counter-offers and stoic villains. That part of the book rang truer than most thrillers.

    In the end, Gideon doesn’t aspire at being much more than good beach reading but it does so with an impressive mastery of stock elements. Aspiring readers should take note of how careful execution and a sympathetic protagonist can satisfy despite a conventional dramatic arc. As for the rest of us readers, well, there are tons of worse books out there… standard thriller formula or not.

  • Timeline, Michael Crichton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Knopf, 1999, 450 pages, C$37.95 hc, ISBN 0-679-44481-5

    After a few years as an amateur book reviewer, I have come to approach any new Crichton book with something approaching masochistic glee. He’s a complex author with complex recurring faults. His novels have rich strengths, rich weaknesses and equally rich thematic characteristics. That makes him endearing to any critical reader usually stuck with bland material. Show me a book reviewer who doesn’t want to discuss Crichton’s hypocritical love/hate relationship with technology, and I’ll show you a book reviewer who’s lost all joy in his job.

    His latest opus, Timeline, is somewhat of a slight departure for him. In some ways, it’s a return to more explicit science-fiction after his usual thriller / technothriller mode. After a lengthy hundred-page prologue, (in which far too many useless characters are introduced) our protagonists step in a time machine and go back to the fourteenth century in quest of their disappeared mentor. Things go badly with a ridiculous speed and soon, it looks as if our bunch of intrepid explorers is stuck in the late dark ages.

    Anyone thinking “gee, that sounds like an excuse for a medieval thriller” is right. By throwing our wholesome American characters in a strange environment, Crichton is not only using one of SF’s standard devices, but also giving more meaning than an environment used without comparative markers. The protagonists stand in for the readers in pointing out the most remarkable differences between the two time periods. And it is a very dangerous time, with enough opportunities for senseless disembowelment to scare off even the most bloodthirsty among us.

    It works, like most Crichton novels usually do. The writing style is clean and uncluttered, with enough meaningless techno-babble to convince the majority of readers. The narrative has occasional lengthy moments, but Crichton packs most of the book with armoured battles, nick-of-time escapes, hidden passageways, surprising betrayals and all that good stuff. It’s a good read. Crichton, as usual, loves to show us how smart he is: the book can easily stand-in as a primer on current medieval research.

    The problem is that as soon as you start thinking about the scientific wrapper of the book, things stop making sense. Crichton spends a lot of time throwing up sand in the air explaining why it’s not possible to change the past, but most of his arguments essentially go back to wishful thinking. It makes even less sense, of course when the characters actually do end up changing history, even despite the “parallel universe” yadda-yadda.

    Experienced SF fans will go nuts pointing out the areas where Crichton clearly means much more than he realizes. He will, for instance, “scan” everyone in a Really Big Computer, but fail to recognize that this way, a backup of the person is created. He will mumble something about relying on other universes to do tricks they can’t comprehend, but fail to recognize that there’s an every bigger story there. He doesn’t follow through his most interesting speculations, that’s simply frustrating. (Take the opening chapter, for instance; the way in which the scientist ends up in the desert is never explained.) That’s when he doesn’t simply set up blindingly obvious setups, during which any halfway attentive reader can feel ahead of the curve.

    One thing he does do well is to create a certain atmosphere of dread. His techno-thriller background makes him unusually adept at considering technology like a big box of dangers. This attitude makes his setup all the more interesting, as it’s a virtual certainty that something awful will certainly go wrong. Compare and contrast with the usual happy-go-lucky scientific endeavours in hard-SF for an interesting subject of discussion.

    It’s details like this that still compel me to read Crichton’s work. Notwithstanding the occasional stinker (The Lost World), most of his books are undeniably compelling page-turners. But when he screws up, he usually does so in an interesting fashion. He might be one of the most mechanical and hypocritical writer in the best-selling business today (witness his anti-technological, anti-corporate discourse, which feels more and more carefully calculated for popular success than in any way heartfelt), but he’s rarely dull. And that, let me tell you, has a quality of its own when you slog through a dozen novels a month.

  • Lifeline, Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1990, 460 pages, C$5.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-28787-7

    Popular fiction often depends on a common, unspoken set of assumptions. Most readers never notice them until they’re stripped away. While Anderson and Beason’s Lifeline is far from being an atypical piece of hard-SF, prepare to be surprised at some of the early plot twists. This is a novel that doesn’t start by playing nice.

    One of those expectations is that heroes should behave, well, heroically. A second should be that “our side” (ie; usually Americans) should also be virtuous. Yet another would be that everything means something; audacious stunts should pay off.

    In the opening pages of Lifeline, the hammer falls repeatedly.

    The narrative starts with a global thermonuclear war. But don’t worry; this will be the least of our problems. Indeed, the novel merely uses the death of a few hundred million people as an excuse to set up a survival story in Earth orbit; cut off from the home planet for the foreseeable future, the four human settlements in space have to co-operate in order to survive. Each has something that the others need. Are they going to be able to settle their differences in time?

    It won’t be a simple endeavour. Aboard the Corporate American station Orbitech, one manager panics, grabs his sick daughter and hijacks a space shuttle. His destination? The Moonbase—which is incidentally headed by a weak director more interested in science than administration. The manager’s attempt fails; the shuttle crashes, destroying it and killing the pilot. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough of a guilt trip, his daughter is also killed in the crash.

    The unpleasantness doesn’t stop there, as the Soviet Station Kibalchich sets in motion a doomsday weapon plan. Aboard the Philippine Aguinaldo station, there’s enough biotechnology to feed the two other stations, if only some politicians didn’t feel it was pay-back time for decades of superpower oppression. (Oh, and a technician is killed when one of the protagonist makes a stupid mistake. Lifeline is an equal-opportunity narrative guilt machine.)

    Naturally, it gets better. Faced with starvation, Orbitech’s deputy director spaces a hundred of the most inefficient people. Later, a mob of survivors knifes the director of the station in the cafeteria. Don’t worry; there’s a public execution later on.

    All of this happens in the first hundred pages of the book, which sets up quite a tone for the rest of the book. It lets up somewhat (another accidental death seemingly caused by one protagonist is explained to be no fault of his own) but the uneasy feeling remains through the whole book.

    Which is a good thing, because otherwise there wouldn’t be much that’s memorable in Lifeline. It’s competent Hard-SF, with sophisticated technical details, adequate characters and average plotting. True to the ethos of Hard-SF, it basically puts the protagonist against a huge problem, then makes it worse until they find the mixture of technological gadgetry and audacious recklessness that will make everything all right.

    On a geopolitical level -never the strength of Hard-SF writers, but I digress-, the presence of the Philippines in space isn’t particularly convincing, even as a token of bribery from the Americans to a vacillating ally. You’d think that space would be at such a premium, and at such value, that America would rather give up a few of the Marshall Islands before handing over a space station.

    Bah, never mind that; Lifeline is a good fast read, but it’s nothing special nor particularly original. That is, if you discount the general nastiness of the first third of the book, where a nuclear war seems to be the least disturbing element of the story.

    First published in 1990, chances are good that Lifeline is now comfortably out of print. It’s not particularly worth hunting down, but it can hit the spot if ever you crave hard-SF with a slightly bitter edge.

  • Her Name, Titanic, Charles Pellegrino

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1988 (1990 reprint), 283 pages, C$8.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-70892-2

    Regular readers of these reviews will certainly remember my overall affection for the work of Charles Pellegrino. Here’s one author who, in my humble opinion, has rarely done wrong. (Notwithstanding his curiously inept Star Trek novel) Over the past few years, I have read one Pellegrino book after another, always managing to avoid his best-known work, Her Name, Titanic.

    After reading the “sequel”, Ghosts of the Titanic, this seemed like an increasingly ridiculous situation. Fortunately, I was able to secure a copy of his 1988 bestseller and dug in, knowing that I’d get my time’s worth of pure enjoyment.

    Once again, I wasn’t disappointed. Her Name, Titanic is fully the equal of Pellegrino’s other non-fiction books. Ghosts of the Titanic had a scattershot approach to the subject, leading me to speculate a more strictly chronological run-through of the voyage for the first volume. Fortunately, this isn’t so.

    In fact, if you want an overview of the events surrounding the Titanic, you’d be better off watching the film. (Though the graphic inset between pages 92-93 will do just fine) Her Name, Titanic is as much about the 1985 re-discovery of the sunken relic as it is about the 1912 catastrophe. We’ll spend as much time with Robert Ballard and the Argo as with the ill-fated passengers of the ocean liner.

    Perhaps more interestingly, we’ll spend all of this time with Charles Pellegrino himself. Her Name, Titanic is the centerpiece of his literary output; all of his other books refer to it in one way or another. (This is unfair actually; all of Pellegrino’s books refer to each other in what are often very, very twisted ways.) His books are unlike any others in that they present a glimpse in the scientific strangeness that’s just lurking beneath the surface of our humdrum lives. History isn’t something that happens in the past for Pellegrino; he’ll uncover jaw-dropping links between seemingly disparate events and present them with a passion that will leave you breathless. His writing style is very deliberately dramatic, though never without a deeply respectful quality. You might not be moved to tears by Her Name, Titanic, but don’t be surprised to find a few lumps in your throat.

    The tangents explored by Pellegrino as almost as fascinating as the events themselves. Pellegrino is a man of eclectic interests, and he effortlessly links the Titanic to World War One, to the Challenger Shuttle disaster, to the life of Bob Ballard, to Apollo 11, to obsession. He admits in the introduction that he’s become obsessed with the ship, and this is, perhaps most of all, a book about this obsession. (Indeed, one of the most memorable passages of the book is a conversation with members of the Alvin crew who don’t share this obsession; “It was a job and we did it the best we could.” [P.221]

    But don’t worry; by the end of the book, you’ll share Pellegrino’s fascination; I certainly did. His effective writing style, love for oddball details, ability to effectively present important information and keenness of mind will have you reading well after the point when you should reasonably stop. Heavens help you if you have the sequel nearby after you’re done with Her Name, Titanic, because you won’t be able to stop. Any Titanic buff pretty much has to read this one, and even casual reader will want to grab this book. It’s powerful writing, and memorable reading.

  • Ventus, Karl Schroeder

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2000, 662 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-57635-7

    Some human endeavours are harder than others. While no one will ever confuse writing a novel with performing brain surgery, writing a mathematic Ph.D. thesis or even raising a child, no one will ever say that writing a good professional novel is easy. You have to balance narrative exposition with careful character development, dramatic tension and basic writing abilities. Analyse any random 600-pages novel and you’ll quickly find a bunch of interlocking factors in a framework so large that it’s almost a wonder to realize that people actually pull this off.

    Science-fiction writers must be even more masochistic than most other novelist. To the already mind-boggling demands of novel-writing, they add the necessity to construct a wholly fictional world and present it to the reader in a seamless fashion. Oh, and explain new complex concepts to the average readers. Why would anyone willingly choose that job?

    Karl Schroeder did. Ventus isn’t his first novel (he co-wrote The Claus Effect with David Nickle), but it’s certainly the one which will make the SF world stand up and take notice of his potential. It’s a massive, epic story about a planet with many secrets, spanning dozen of very different characters and a conflict with galactic repercussions.

    Yet we begin this hard-SF story in a fashion that is almost identical to most fantasy trilogies. Young Jordan Mason is an apprentice on a vast estate. While the first chapter hints strongly at a SFictional tone -what with an attack by a silver mechal life form-, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything radically different between him and some medieval squire. Gunpowder has been invented, but what’s this about flying creatures attacking any higher technology?

    As the story unfolds, both Mason and the reader discover that the ground beneath their feet isn’t nearly as stable -nor natural- as it may first seems. Jordan is almost kidnapped by strangers, thrust in complex political games and eventually made to realize an awesome untapped power. Before the book is through, we’ll visit a fantastically advanced Earth, be privy to scenes of devastating scope and -maybe more importantly- witness the emotional evolution of a cast of characters.

    Ventus is a big, satisfying book, the kind that’s made for you, a comfy chair, plenty of hot chocolate and a long Sunday in front of a fireplace. It takes a while, more than a long while, to get going, but once it ignites, it’s a highly enjoyable read. Most notable is the changing nature of the characters; those who seems initially reliable end up as raving psychopaths and those who seems singularly inept ends up controlling everything. Then there’s the impressive feat of managing more than a dozen major characters without fumbling too much. Ventus doesn’t feel like a first novel; you’d be hard-pressed to consider it as being anything less than a great work by a professional author at the height of his powers. You’ll love the SF elements and the characters.

    The science-fantasy aspect of the tale is annoying at first, but makes increasing sense as the underpinning of Ventus is explained. After that realisation, one can only be impressed at how well the tale unfolds, how the technological/scientific themes are well-exploited in order to give meaning to the story. The narrative even introduces interesting philosophical elements late in the story without undue effort. It’s also one of the smoothest blend of science and characterization to come along in recent memories.

    After the impressive Ventus, it’s hard to wait until Schroeder’s next novel. Canada has produced several impressive SF writers in the past few years, but few seem to be audacious enough to turn out stories with the epic scope of Ventus. Schroeder seems, with his first solo novel, to aim for a spot aside Vernor Vinge and L.E. Modesitt Jr. If everything goes right, get ready for a memorable career.

  • I. Asimov, Isaac Asimov

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 1994, 562 pages, C$32.50 hc, ISBN 0-385-41701-2

    Any discussion of Isaac Asimov, the writer, must inevitably dwell on how prolific he was. In roughly fifty years, he wrote more than 470 books (yes, more books than most people will ever read in their lifetime!), and that’s not counting the various articles, speeches and assorted miscellanea he also penned during his career.

    Asimov died in 1992, but it took a few more years to publish everything he was working on at the time. One of those projects was an autobiography, I. Asimov, in which he more or less summed up his life. Incredibly enough, this wasn’t even a first autobiography for him: In 1979 and 1980, he wrote In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt. While I. Asimov acknowledges these previous autobiographies, it’s also a stand-alone work. (As Asimov explains in the introduction, the first two volumes have long been out of print) Anyone interested in the writer’s life should pick up this work; it’s pretty much “the ultimate Asimov.”

    Hefting in at more than 550 pages, this book is divided in 166 short thematic chapters arranged in rough chronological order; while he’ll occasionally break his narrative to describe his relationship with other persons or to give a general opinion about a given subject, most of the book proceeds from childhood to education to early adult life to late adult life to semi-retirement. Each chapter clearly announces the subject, and even though there’s no index (argh), the table of content should be sufficient for most casual reference use. A 1994 bibliography completes I. Asimov.

    As far as autobiographies go, this one is quite satisfying. The scope of it is ideal, of course. There isn’t much to Asimov that’s left unexamined by the time we read Janet Asimov’s epilogue. The writing style is compulsively readable, with a good mix of humour and information, of dry self-depreciation and proper acknowledgement of his strengths. You can easily get through this tome in a few days.

    Asimov is also surprisingly candid, maybe a bit more than some fans might have expected. He makes no excuses, for instance, of his rather libertine attitude towards affairs during his first marriage. He can be quite cutting regarding whom he considers idiots. The failure of his first marriage is described quickly, as is his disappointment in his son (who he describes as a “gentleman of leisure.” [P.176]) (At least Asimov didn’t live to see him implicated in a child-pr0n scandal in 1998. Oh, the things we learn while fact-checking on Google…)

    But don’t assume that these few issues are emblematic of the rest of the book. When Asimov loves, he loves a lot. It’s impossible to close the book and remain un-moved by his pure love of writing. (See his notes on his divorce, P.336) His own pleasure in public speaking is also obvious, and even quite charming; he was good at it and took considerable pleasure in delivering the goods as needed, even without notes or time-pieces. His devotion to his daughter Robin is touching, and his love for his second wife Janet is the source of considerable emotion late in the book.

    Isaac Asimov has not in good health for the last decade of his life, and the last fourth of I. Asimov reflects the tragic dignity in which he left. The whole book itself was written with the mindset that it would be Asimov’s final word on himself, and by the end, it’s hard to escape impending death. The last few pages are especially poignant, as we’re left to contemplate what such a first-rate mind could have done had it been allowed five, fifty, five hundred more years. Alas, Asimov is gone, and there won’t be anyone else like him. Ever.

    While Asimov may take delight in presenting himself as the humble son of an immigrant shop-keeper and in assuring us that nothing spectacular ever happened in his life, he misses the point: Asimov himself is the highlight of I. Asimov, not his life history. For any fan of the author, casual or obsessive, this is the definitive book so far.

  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Raincoast, 1997 (2001 reprint), 223 pages, C$9.95 tpb, ISBN 1-55192-398-X

    “Well, I’m surprised to see that you’ve condescended to read Harry Potter” said my uncle’s girlfriend when she saw me with the first volume in hand.

    The only really surprising thing is how long it’s taken me to actually read the darn thing.

    I’ve always been deeply suspicious of the popular intellectual snobbery that states that “if it’s popular, it can’t be good”. Without citing too many examples, there are times where something is famous because it’s good. It might not be better than your favorite obscure painting/movie/author, but that in itself isn’t a reason to criticize anything wildly fashionable.

    I first wanted to read Harry Potter a long time ago. I downloaded the pirated electronic versions of the whole series late in 2000, only to realize that I just don’t read novels on screen; my reader’s reflexes are still hard-wired to paper, ink and glue. My sister bought and read the first two volumes. Ages passed. A movie got made. I borrowed the first volume from my sister, then consciously put it away and enjoyed the movie on its own terms. A few more weeks passed and then I decided to celebrate the end of 2001 with a good fluffy read.

    I enjoyed almost every page of it.

    Before gushing, though, allow me to say that there are two criticisms I can heap upon J.K. Rowling and the first Harry Potter novel.

    First, how deliberate it all seems. Let’s see: to ensnare kids, what better than a misunderstood, under-appreciated hero who really has exceptional magical powers and whose parents are really powerful magicians? You couldn’t design a better hook on purpose, much like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game seemed mathematically designed to hook young teenagers with pretty much the same levers.

    Second; how conventional it all is. Tales of magical academies and of young magicians have been written before. Some of them quite good. Almost every gadget used in The Philosopher’s Stone has been invented elsewhere, used elsewhere and seen elsewhere. There isn’t a lot of new, inventive fantasy material in Harry Potter. (So far.)

    But guess what? None of these two objections matter very much to the base reader that I am. What is far more important is how clearly Rowling writes, how well she builds her characters and how many little flourishes she manages to pack on every page of her novel.

    I attended the World Fantasy Convention in early November 2001, and the slightly dismissive tone in which Harry Potter was discussed struck me as unfair. While elements of the Pottermania leave me nonplussed (the fourth volume shouldn’t have won the Hugo, for instance), a lot of it struck me as simple sour grapes at someone outside the genre reaping all the attention and the money.

    The first volume of the series, whatever the objections of the fantasy litterati are, is a wonderful little book that didn’t feel at all like a kid’s novel. I’ve always been a sucker for the “academy” type of novel, from Starship Troopers to, say, Gravity Dreams, and The Philosopher’s Stone ranks among the best of them. It takes conventional elements of magical training and cleverly stuffs them in the British educational system. Simple and obvious, but not so obvious that it’s cliché. And, like it or not, Rowling’s produced a fantasy novel that is immeasurably more enjoyable than at least 90% of what’s published in “adult” fantasy today.

    While I’m not completely bowled over, I still feel that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a great little book that will make you -even you!- fall in love with reading all over again. Embrace Pottermania. In this case, what’s popular is what’s good.

    (A few words about the movie vs the book: Amazing fidelity, though the book “feels” more adequately paced. The novel also provides more details on Harry’s family life, Hagrid’s past and one or two extra challenges before the end, not to mention a second Quiddich game.)