Book Review

  • Chesapeake, James Michener

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Fawcett, 1978, 1083 pages, C$3.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-449-24163-7

    Is it possible for a saga to be under-whelming?

    After all, the adjective seems to be an antithesis of its subject. A saga is almost, by definition, intended to be impressive; spanning dozens of years, involving scores of characters and moving through often-historical events, a saga should thrill, engross and sustain a deep and unshakeable awe from its audience. To deliver anything less is to cheat the reader out of time and, often, money. And yet, Chesapeake…

    It’s not as if James Michener doesn’t know how to write a saga. Without flashiness, he regularly outpaces Stephen King in page-counts, churning out thousand-pages bricks one after the other. His usual formula consists in taking a locale (Texas, Alaska, Mexico… or the Chesapeake Bay, obviously) and tracing back its history through a series of vignettes taking place at quasi-epochal stages. Mother, sons and grandchildren all figure preeminently, aging through the novel as a vast tapestry of events is slowly built through vignette-chapters.

    Chesapeake is, without a shadow of an argument, a saga. It starts out in 1583, as an Indian is exiled from his tribe and forced to settle down near the Chesapeake Bay, becoming the leader of another tribe. Then we move on to 1608, as Englishmen John Steed also settles down the Chesapeake and start building his trading empire. Events accumulate, and major “characters” arrive at the Chesapeake; the Turlocks, Paxmores, Carters and Caveneys successively join the narrative.

    As this is a saga extending over hundred of years, it’s a distinguishing feature of Chesapeake that families, not individuals, are the defining characters of the novel. Steeds are the righteous aristocracy; Turlocks the low-life, cunning pirates; Paxmores the peace-loving religious artisans (as if the family name wasn’t enough of a giveaway); Carters the token blacks; Caveneys the Irish lawmen. Nature or nurture? Michener melts families into monolithic entities. As the chapters keep killing off characters, we only need to glance at the family name to have an indication of the moral fabric of the individual. (In general, that is: Michener takes some pleasure in perverting a few individuals, but they usually go back to their family’s ways, as is the case with Paul Steed or Teach Turlock.)

    The biggest problem of Chesapeake isn’t there, however. It’s the impression that save for the meaty middle section (with the afore-mentioned Paul Steed and “Captain Teach” Turlock), all of Chesapeake‘s individual chapters are vignettes that no not necessarily set up bigger and more interesting conflicts later down the novel. In fact, the last chapters are more like snapshots of life across the Chesapeake rather than true climactic unfolding of events. You would expect hundred of years’ worth of bottled-up family feuds, but instead you get a fifty-page short story on hunting dogs. Whaaat?

    Michener’s main failing contributes to highlight the other annoyances that sour Chesapeake‘s impression: Michener’s lengthy apologetic exposé of slavery and discrimination against blacks. (Though one must favourable mention his unflinching description of slave trading) The futility of the “Voyage” passages once they stop bringing new characters to the Chesapeake Bay. The absolutely massive padding of the whole story. The multiple lacks of latter payoffs from the earlier setups…

    Let’s not deny that from a reading-on-the-bus standpoint, Chesapeake delivers the goods in clear, readable prose. It’s as the novel draws at a close and that no threads are tied up that the overall futility of the novel becomes clear. Saga it technically is, but masterpiece it truly isn’t.

  • Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Charles Pellegrino

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1994 (1995 reprint), 386 pages, C$16.00 tpb, ISBN 0-380-72633-5

    A few years ago, I remember seeing a TV special that purported to explain the mysteries of the Bible through scientific investigation. Problem was, this show was obvious produced by fundamentalist authorities. The explanations were so ludicrously far-fetched that my basic feeling was that it was far simpler to blame the miracles on tall stories than to actually try to give them a rational, scientific explanation.

    Now here comes Charles Pellegrino, with a book that’s ostensibly about “solving the Bible’s ancient mysteries through archaeological discovery.” Normally, I wouldn’t have even picked up the book, but then you’ve got to realize that Charles Pellegrino is no ordinary writer: His three Science-Fiction novels (Marching to Valhalla, The Killing Star and Dust) were deeply impressive work from a writer who obviously brimmed with innovative concepts, and could present them in an intriguing fashion.

    Pellegrino is obviously someone with far-ranging interests. His professional credits cover a wide range of accomplishments, from anti-matter rocket designs to paleontological thought experiments that led to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. On top of accomplished scientific and literary careers, he’s also an archaeologist, and Return to Sodom and Gomorrah is nothing less but a book-length essay about middle-eastern archaeology.

    The Bible elements remains, but Pellegrino (as a confirmed agnostic) works in a radically different fashion from that TV Special of my youth; he uses the Bible as a way of demonstrating what he’s seen in the field, not the other way around. And most often, the archaeological record is even more fantastic than the Bible itself.

    Take Sodom, for instance. Archaeologists have discovered a city that roughly corresponded to the biblical city of Sodom. But that city presented them with a puzzle: It seemed to have been abandoned in a hurry, and left untouched for several years afterward, even though other fertile places nearby had been re-colonized very quickly. Even more mysterious; the remains of the city appeared to have burned quite thoroughly, this despite the fact that there were no flammable materials in the city, dried mud being the construction material of choice. Charred animal bones everywhere, even though it takes a formidable amount of energy to char bones.

    Pellegrino and his friends in the field came up with a rather spectacular explanation: Underneath most of the middle east, as we know, lies multiple deposits of flammable hydrocarbons. What if, spurred by continental plaque movement, one large deposit made its way to the surface, like a natural tar pit? What if it first came out as natural gas -the lightest part of a petrol deposit-, and encountered an open cooking flame?

    Instant firestorm, fuelled by natural geological pressure and instantly lethal. Completely destroying habitable land. Typical Hollywood blockbuster premise, right there. Only a theory, of course, but doesn’t it sound good?

    Return to Sodom and Gomorrah is filled with discoveries of the sort. From evidence of a mitochondrial Eve to the common volcanic origins of both Palestinians and Israelis, passing by an explanation of the Dead Sea Scroll controversy and a huge amount of lucidly told ancient history, Pellegrino truly delivers the goods with this book. And he leaves plenty to the imagination too, as be regularly tosses off tantalizing hints of personal exploits (randomly mixing fire-fights, nuclear accidents and personal vendettas) with mind-blowing bigger issues. (Are we destined to create our evolutionary successors? Are we repeating the environmental mistakes that previously destroyed other civilizations?) Pellegrino is fluent not only in past history or prehistoric lingo, but also in the jargon of astrophysics and the vernacular of SF, and the result is simply unique.

    This is a book that will stimulate your thought processes, push you to buy everything else that Pellegrino wrote, and reconsider the Bible with a keener eye. Trying to make it justice is almost impossible; like most great scientific vulgarizations, you have to read it to truly feel it. Great reading for persons actively looking for their next big idea rush.

  • The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 1954, 1153 pages, C$95.00 hc, ISBN 0-261-10230-3

    It seems strange for a voracious reader such as myself not to have read The Lords of the Rings, one of literary history’s most influential work, in or outside the science-fiction/fantasy genre. Hey, everyone has their blind spots; at least I took the time to correct this one, plunging in Tolkien’s 1000+ pages saga in the waning hours of December 31, 1999.

    It took nearly three weeks, but I finally finished The Lord of the Rings. The earth didn’t tremble, the world was not magically transformed to a better place, I was not struck down by a bolt of pure epiphany. Of course, given the amount of hype that preceded the book, I shouldn’t have been overly surprised by a certain letdown. No book can survive this amount of build-up.

    But even then, I found The Lord of the Rings a laborious read. The very qualities of the work that made its reputation -the breathtaking world-building, the literary writing, the inclusion of songs and made-up languages, the epic nature of the narration- are the very things that drove me to frustration. Things that could have been told in two pages suddenly took a whole chapter; a rather simple trip from point A to point B became lengthy proceedings punctuated by crises that often didn’t amount to much lasting excitement or dramatic point. I found it strange that Tolkien spent so much time away from Frodo when he is undoubtedly the center of interest in the story.

    I skipped the songs, skimmed the most boring passages, read only a few dozen pages per day and generally was bored stiff by most of the book. And yet, I find myself with a generally positive opinion of the book. Certainly, fear of peer pressure certainly accounts for part of this sentiment (being stoned to death by rabid Tolkien fans is a fate that I wish upon no one, lest of all myself) but not all of it. I might have been decidedly unimpressed by the lack of zippiness of The Lord of the Rings, but there’s no disputing that this is a very good, very impressive work.

    Nowhere more impressive, of course, in the sheer depth of the world created by Tolkien, which was subsequently mined for endless hidden ripoffs which at least usually improved on the turgidness of the original. Still, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and few authors have been as flattered as Tolkien in seeing a whole publishing genre spring up from their not-so-humble creation.

    In the end, however, mere mortals like me can scarcely complain about a work that’s too literary, too complex or too richly-detailed. It’s a measure of how darn good The Lord of the Rings is that even if I didn’t especially like it, I have no choice but to recommend it.

    BRIEFLY: The Hobbit, Tolkien’s prologue to The Lord of the Rings, is undoubtedly written for children, but adults will find here a rougher yet perhaps more interesting story than the full-fledged sequel. The story remains focused on a single hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, and thus doesn’t have the dyptic structure of the trilogy. The considerably amount of dry British humor also helps.

    BRIEFLY: Bored of the Rings, the Harvard Lampoon’s parody of Tolkien’s trilogy, is far shorter (160 loosely typeset pages) and much more strictly enjoyable than its source material. Well, that’s if your brand of humor include snickering at gags like “Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have decreased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market.” [P.XV] Still, the book essentially parodies the first book of the trilogy, plus the conclusion—which either speaks about the non-essential nature of the rest of the Lord of the Rings, or the authors’ laziness. A hoot for fans.

  • The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Little Brown, 1972-1978, ???? pages, C$??.?? mmpb, ISBN Various

    The Winds of War: Little Brown 1972, 885 pages
    War and Remembrance: Little Brown, 1978, 1042 pages

    As historians look back on the twentieth century, one single event will loom large over the period: World War Two. Born from the sum of world history up to that point and influencing latter human affairs forever, WW2 has, in a few years, reshaped geography, history, science and countless lives.

    Actually, it’s misnomer to call WW2 “one single event” given that it was a conflict made of several elements not always linked together. As it took place over six years, it also contains far too much material to be simply resumed.

    So you can imagine the built-in difficulties for Herman Wouk as he attempts to dramatize WW2 in The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. The sheer size of the result (nearly 2400 pages all told) is an indication of the magnitude of the task.

    Succinctly put, these two books follow the various adventures of the Henry family and their acquaintances, from 1939 to Pearl Harbour (The Winds of War) and them from Pearl Harbour to Hiroshima. (War and Remembrance) Initially, there’s Victor “Pug” Henry (waiting for a command assignment, but shuffled in a diplomatic role), his wife Rhoda (who might or might not be entirely faithful to her husband) and the three Henry children: Warren (promising naval aviator), Byron (devil-may-care wanderer) and Madeline (soon enough responsible for a radio show).

    Love affairs, friendship, casual acquaintances and such soon expand this narrow cadre, with the result that we truly get a diverse sampling of the war from various point of view. One character always manages to be at the right place at the right time for most of the war’s events. Though the plot mechanics often threaten to overwhelm the narrative drive, Wouk must be commended for his solution to the size problem of WW2.

    Unfortunately, there’s no solution to the size problems of the two books themselves. While a certain amount of padding is probably inevitable in 2,400 pages, Wouk more than overdoes it in this duology, inserting whole scenes of no narrative nor documentary impact and chapters than can be skipped without ill-effect. The Jastrows’ story, in particular, is more than obvious (and manipulative) in its ultimate denouement, and attempts to drag it out only annoy rather than inform.

    On the other hand, maybe because of these fluffy passages, Wouk does manage to bring back dramatic tension to World War II. For contemporary readers, it’s a story of the past, a fixed sequences of events that lead to our reality. It’s all-too-easy to forget that the issue of the war was unknowable at the time. The Winds of War excels at showing the possible early outcomes of the war’s beginning; Germany invading England, the Allied powers suing for peace after Poland, etc… This sense of absolute incertitude is the strongest virtue of the first volume.

    Wouk should also be praised for the passages presented as translated excerpts of (the fictional) General Armin von Roon’s military analyses of WW2 as interpreted from a German point of view. These passages are clearly written, and present an alternate perspective of the events, often more complete and enlightening that what the story’s protagonists see.

    There are a few interesting storyteller’s tricks sprinkled throughout the second volume, such as the remarkable roster call of American airmen sacrificed during the battle of Midway, or a straight admission that a fictional character never existed, but was inspired by hundred of others who did exist. Most of these asides work.

    Herman Wouk’s duology makes you not only understand the events of the Second World War, but also instill a certain emotion into them, whether it’s incertitude, suspense, devastation or loss. Both books deserve to be read, if only for fulfilling the second’s book title: War and Remembrance.

  • Ringmaster!, Jerry Springer and Laura Morton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 1998, 273 pages, C$34.99 hc, ISBN 0-312-20188-5

    Okay.

    I realize that it’s going to be impossible to review this book without saying it at least once: I like “The Jerry Springer Show”. I know it doesn’t make sense for a good, polite catholic boy like me to be a fan of one of the trashiest talk show in television history, but there you go.

    Oh, it’s not like I haven’t tried to rationalize this odd preference. I like to say that it makes me escape from my dreary own boring life. I say that “The Jerry Springer Show” offers a variety of viewpoints, accents, attitudes and arguments that I’m unlikely to find anywhere else. I consider the show to be a good barometer for modern social morals. I think that Springer is a terrific host. The show is perfectly hilarious to watch in groups. And if you don’t like it without having watched it, you don’t know what I’m talking about.

    WIth Ringmaster! Jerry Springer gets the chance to both describe his life so far and to give us a glimpse of the mechanics of his shows. As could be expected, his life is less interesting than his work.

    Springer was born in London during World War II. He and his parents quickly emigrated in America after the war, and Jerry grew up in New York. He attended college in New Orleans where he discovered a passion for politics. After being a volunteer for political candidates, -and finishing both his military service and a law degree- he was elected on the Cincinnati city council in 1971. Forced to resign after a signed check of his was found in a whorehouse (yes, who would have thought it, a sex scandal), he nevertheless was elected as Cincinnati’s mayor in 1977, at the age of 36. The multi-talented Springer then went in journalism as a news anchor and reporter. After a few years, he began host his own show, which went from an ordinary interview format to the wilder entertainment we now know today.

    All of this is told as an “interview with God.” Though Springer doesn’t skip out on the essential details, we too often get just that; the essential details. His reasons to step down as mayor are not fully explained, and the whole matter dismissed in a single sentence (“running for governor”) But Springer’s biography, of course, isn’t the real reason we’re reading the book. This reason, of course, is to know more about Springer’s day job, the “Jerry Springer Show”. There, the book truly shines.

    “Where do they find these people?” is the traditional question most neophytes ask of “The Jerry Springer Show.” The book tells us that the show seldom, if ever, bothers to “find” guests: They receive nearly 3,000 calls per week/day on their phone lines, and the Springer producers call back the most intriguing stories.

    “Is it true?” Here again, the book offers a few reassurances: In order to on the show, each guest is forced to sign a legal document making them responsible for the whole cost of a show ($80,000 US) in case they’re lying. Most stories are cross-verified. Each guest has to sign another document detailing twenty “surprises” they might be told during the show.

    The mechanism of the show is also endlessly fascinating: Make-up artists, dentists and psychologists are employed by the show. They’ve got a prop and wardrobe department. They must book guests on different planes and different hotels. The security people are Chicago Police officers. The audience is carefully selected for balanced demographics and looks. (Older people are placed at the back in case of front-line mayhem.)

    In short, this is the perfect gift for any fan of the show. Ringmaster! is co-written for maximum readability (don’t be surprised to read it in a single evening) and includes enough great anecdotes to justify your while. Non-fans of the show will obviously not be converted -Jerry attempts at instilling “respectability” are sincere but misguided,- but fans will lap it up with glee. Good fun.

  • Managing Martians, Donna Shirley with Danelle Morton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Broadway Books, 1998, 276 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-7679-0240-8

    Your reviewer is lucky enough to work as a technical specialist in a unit doing research as to how new ideas and new trends that will shape the way we will work in the future. One of the most fascinating current trends is something called Knowledge Management. It’s based on the idea that low-level white-collar work is becoming increasingly automated (no more typists, no more messengers, etc…) and that what remains is a type of office worker far more concerned with refined knowledge than raw data. Unfortunately, this knowledge, being intangible and formless, defies all previous theories of management.

    Knowledge Management might be only a fad (only time will tell), but it is built on solid tendencies. Everywhere we look in this new economic context, it’s obvious that purely intellectual work is accounting for a substantial part of growth. It’s now a cliché that the nerds of yesterday are the drivers of today’s high-tech sector, but these nerds cannot be managed in the same way than the worker class has traditionally been driven.

    As far as nerd projects go, you really can’t find better than space exploration. These “rocket scientists” are no ordinary workers, and their bosses must be no ordinary managers. Everyone applauded when NASA landed the Pathfinder/Sojourner probe on Mars on July 4th, 1997. A lot of effort has been expended in sending this little rover a few million kilometers away, and Managing Martians finally tells the pre-glory story from the point of view of the team leader of the Sojourner project, Donna Shirley.

    Managing Martians is a book that attempts to do many things at once. It’s an inspirational story of a country girl turned pro scientist. It’s a business book on how to manage knowledge workers. It’s a techno-scientific work of triumph through engineering. And yet, despite its disparate nature, it’s an interesting account on all three viewpoints.

    As a biography, it tracks Shirley’s life through the difficult career path of a woman in a male industry. Born in 1941 in a small Oklahoma town, Donna Shirley knew early on that she wouldn’t be just another one of the girls. Developing an early interest in aeronautics, she got her pilot license, went to college, found love, switched majors from engineering to English and found a job as a technical writer at McDonnell Aircraft. After finding out that this wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life, she went back to college, got her engineering degree and ended up at JPL. The rest wasn’t easier, as the whims of space politics decided where she would work.

    Are good managers born or raised? Tough to tell, but Shirley’s unconventional career path would later reflect on her management style and though Managing Martians doesn’t claim to be a business book, it’s still a pretty good illustration -through concrete example- of the new challenges of knowledge work. “When managing brilliant, creative people,” she says, “at some point you find it’s impossible to command or control them because you can’t understand what they are doing.” [P.88] The story of Sojourner truly gives a good idea of the realities of space exploration in all its bureaucratic, nitty-gritty details. Not much preaching here, but more than a few examples.

    Of course, the book truly shines when considered as the ultimate insider’s account of the whole Pathfinder/Sojourner project. Numerous technical issues are clearly explained and highlighted. Managing Martians succeeds at giving a sense of the quiet techno-heroism that’s the hallmark of most top-notch scientific endeavor. No superheroes, just regular people doing the best job they can. Even Shirley doesn’t try to claim undue applause, deferring often to the members of her team.

    Hopefully, many people will read this book and get a sense of what it’s like to “be a rocket scientist.” Others will read it and learn a few things about how to run a high-tech business. Others will just enjoy the inside story of the Sojourner project. But all will get something valuable out of the book.

  • Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Norton, 1997, 480 pages, C$19.99 tpb, ISBN 0-393-31755-2

    Regular readers of these reviews have probably notices a personal fondness for books that explain How Things Works. This explains a fascination with hard-Science-Fiction, techno-thrillers, scientific vulgarization and other documentary works. Hard sciences -physics, chemistry, biology, etc.- lend themselves particularly well to vulgarization given that they’re based on a set of fairly common theories and experimental body of proof.

    The “softer” sciences -history, sociology, psychology, etc.- are decidedly harder to quantify. Everyone has their own pet theories and the nature itself of social sciences makes it much harder to prove theorems by practical experiment. One of the aims of Jared Diamond’s excessively ambitious Guns, Germs and Steel is to provide a solid foundation for “the future of human history as a science”.

    It all starts with a very obvious question: Why was it that Europe conquered North America, and not vice-versa? Most high-school students can probably answer this question by pointing out the technological differences between the two civilizations. But that only brings up another question: Why was there such a significant difference? Was is because of Europe’s more numerous population? And why was that?

    Like a patient parent answering the endless “Why” questions of an inquisitive child, Diamond peels away all the layers of questioning until he can start from the very foundations of civilization. And, as he states in his introduction, the answers he brings forth are a conscious attempt to dispel all racial theories of history by highlighting environmental differences. Europeans were not smarter than American-Indians; they just happened to grow up at the right place.

    The best parts of Guns, Germs and Steel come early on, as Diamond lucidly explains how, for instance, the presence of large domesticable animals led to the rise of sedentary agriculture, of resistance to disease, of mass production. He explains the mechanisms of technological innovation. He shows that agriculture wasn’t necessarily an “obvious” choice to hunter-gatherers. His chapter on agriculture through enlightened selection (“How to make an Almond”) is, easily, one of the most mind-blowing vulgarization piece I’ve read in a long while. Also be sure to read his lucid explanation of how language is “invented”.

    Most of the book is simply that; a whirlwind explanation of 13,000 years of human history. It’s unusually readable for such a scholarly work. This book is going to end up on many college reading lists—indeed, on many general-interest reading lists too.

    Still, the book isn’t perfect. The fourth part (“Around the World in Five Chapters”) is crucial to Diamond’s thesis (It’s a set of practical applications to the theoretical instruments developed in the rest of the book) but is of such a specialized interest that it’s a noticeable notch below the interest sustained by the rest of the book. Also, in trying to dispel racial theories of civilization, Diamond doth protest too much, and ends up dangerously close to annoyance in overpraising non-western civilization. Finally -though a careful re-reading of the book might invalidate this criticism- Diamond’s praise of societies where innovation is encouraged (in “Necessity’s Mother”) might run counter to his central thesis of non-racial difference; at some point, equal societies make their choices (eg; democracy/totalitarism) and these choices take the environment out of the equation and brings back the debate on purely social grounds.

    Guns, Germs and Steel is a unique book, a ground-breaking study of civilizations as entities that’s nevertheless as compelling as it is thorough. It has already won the Pulitzer prize, has figured prominently on bestseller lists and seems destined to a respected status in both popular and specialized fields. Indeed, its gets top recommendations from this reviewer; read it!

  • Blue Justice, Jeannine Kadow

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Signet, 1998, 400 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-19588-4

    From time to time, it happens that an otherwise good novel suffers from one single wacky element, a part of it that just seems incongruous with what we expect, or what we consider to be “acceptable”. It happens that this single element destroys the novel, illustrating other structural flaws or simply turning the reviewer from an unbiased to a negative state of mind.

    Blue Justice has such an element, in the character of Maria Alvarez, “a gorgeous 19th Precinct beat cop with a license to kill… and kill again.” She not only the Police Commissioner’s daughter, but she’s also a flaming psychopath, serially sleeping with the whole NYPD police force, harassing co-workers and -oh yeah, that too- killing other police officers by the hearseload.

    It stretches, bends, twists and crooks believability not only to include such a character in a book, but to base a whole novel around such an element. The logical blunders are so big that they threaten to engulf the reader’s good faith. How are we to believe that such a twisted character could become a police(wo)man? How are we to accept the fact that she’s never been found out by any other person? How are we to gulp down the assumption that she killed almost a dozen police officers in a year and no one figured out that she was romantically involved with most -if not all- of these policemen? How should we react to the idea that she could go around harassing a fellow police officer (charging harassment, hanging dead eviscerated cats in his locker, charging rape then retracting it, sending ominous letters, making unpleasant phone calls, etc…) in complete impunity?

    These are the questions at the start of the novel. But then something quite wonderful happens; the narrative makes you accept it and you’re in for the ride. Blue Justice isn’t your usual cop novel; it twists the usual assumptions, takes a few large risks and ends up as a pretty interesting piece of work despite never being quite believable.

    Most of the novel’s strength is in the characters, from the thirty-year veteran Ed Gavin to rookie Jon Strega, tough-nails detective “Cue Ball” Ballantine and Ivy-league blond supercop Hansen, without forgiving psycho Alvarez. These are no simple caricatures, or movie cliché stereotypes. Struggling relationships, devious criminals and internal demons all vastly complicate our protagonists’ lives. Things never go quite as well as planned, never to the appropriate persons. If Hollywood would be to bring Blue Justice to the silver screen, critics would be running to their word processors in order to call it “brilliantly revisionist” and such.

    The premise of the book itself isn’t conventional. Veteran Gavin is clued in that a rash of police suicides (including his partner) isn’t as simple as it would seem, but even though he zeroes in on the killer’s identity, it’s never as simple as bringing in the handcuffs. Other things have to be attended to, and while these “other things” are mostly extrataneous to the remainder of the novel, they also constitute most of the atmosphere. In passing, we get a good look at the NYPD and its own little quirks and internal particularities.

    While Blue Justice never overcomes this initial feeling of oh-goodness-I-can’t-believe-it outrageousness, it still manages to pull itself together and deliver a good police procedural. The writing style is enjoyable, and the pacing is dynamic enough to compensate for other flaws. Maybe more interesting for jaded readers of the genre, Blue Justice is nevertheless worth a look. Just be ready to give some slack to the psycho killer.

  • Sea Strike, James H. Cobb

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1997, 351 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-16616-3

    Military techno-thrillers are usually written by men for men, starring men fighting against other men with carefully described weapons in imaginary wars taking place in the not-too-distant future. More attention is usually given to the geopolitics, the fancy weapons and the action scenes than to character development or fancy prose. It’s an unusually popular genre, at least if we judge it by its foremost practitioners: Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, Larry Bond have all spent some time on the bestseller charts, reaping the results of some pretty good efforts. With Sea Strike, James L. Cobb manages to produce a decent novel that perfectly fits into the genre, and provides good entertainment for any reader.

    Cobbs innovate within his field by featuring a female protagonist: Amanda Garrett is the captain of the USS Cunningham, a stealth destroyer featuring the latest in high-tech devices. It’s not the first time that the genre has seen major female characters (Clancy, for instance, has several strong female roles), but never so much at the forefront. Cobbs gets further points by convincingly building Commander Garrett as a reasonably realistic heroine. This reviewer was not enthused by the romantic subplot, but other readers might think otherwise.

    Sea Strike won’t turn off many readers by the difficulty of its prose style, which is still as efficiently functional as the best other novels of its genre. The technical descriptions are painlessly inserted, and the action scenes are detailed with the proper mix of detail and directness.

    Of course, all of this takes a second seat to original plotting and cool but interesting realism. Fortunately, Sea Strike performs equally well in both areas.

    In matters of geopolitics, Cobbs goes to good old China to find its antagonists, though things are made more interesting by a civil war involving not only Chinese dissidents, but also Taiwan. Though some passages dealing with internal Chinese matters could have been edited out of the novel, the development of the crisis is well-handled, doesn’t seem too outrageous (once you get around the idea of a Chinese civil war) and competently presents both the military and the diplomatic side of things.

    In terms of cool techno-gadgetry, Sea Strike remains in the realm of the believable, with only a few minor gadgets besides, of course, the USS Cunningham stealth destroyer itself. The gadgets are effectively used, however, and the technical jargon isn’t undecipherable.

    The emotional mark of distinction for this type of literature isn’t a sense of wonder, of loss or of affection, but a sense of cool novelty from the action scenes. The best techno-thrillers (like Payne Harrison’s Thunder of Erebus, or Harold Coyle’s Sword Point) all feature individual vignettes, neatly integrated in the action but at the same time standing on their own as mini-scenes of inherent coolness. They must be visually spectacular, technically innovative and not without a certain sense of panache and ironic humor. Sea Strike has a few of them, from the smashing demise of a Chinese nuclear submarine to a last-last-minute helicopter rescue. They don’t take Sea Strike to the classic level, but they certainly brings back some of the sheer fun of this type of novels.

    The end result is a novel that’s quite enjoyable. Normally, this wouldn’t warrant a recommendation, but given the sad late-nineties state of the military technothriller as compared to its heydays of the early nineties, Sea Strike is certainly worth picking up for fans of the genre. James H. Cobbs has proven his belonging to the genre, and we can only await his next novel.

  • Borderlands of Science, Charles Sheffield

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1999, 367 pages, C$32.50 hc, ISBN 0-671-57836-7

    We live in interesting times. Everywhere you look, things are changing, and they’re changing at an accelerated rate. It used to be that a decade could pass without perceptible difference. Not anymore. Going back a decade from 1999 brings us to a world still locked in a cold war, without Internet, without decent personal computers, without quasi-classic cultural references like JURASSIC PARK and TITANIC. Anecdotal evidence aside, we are now collectively running along in a race called Progress.

    Most of this progress is fuelled, directly or not, by science and technology. In Borderlands of Science, noted scientist and SF author Charles Sheffield tries to establish what is the extent of today’s knowledge. “This book” writes Sheffield in his introduction, “defines the frontiers of today’s science.” This isn’t an easy task, and even though Sheffield makes valiant efforts, the results still fails short of his ambitions.

    Part of the problem, as Sheffield himself acknowledges, is that science is so mind-bogglingly all-inclusive and specialized to the point of rarefaction, that no sane individual can aspire to know all about it. Sheffield is, by formation, a physicist/mathematician with a body of experience in astronautics. This makes him an ideal writer to talk about physics and space exploration, but that doesn’t make him an authority in chemistry, biology or computer science. Indeed Borderlands of Science falters when it tries to dissect these subjects, an impression strengthened by the pell-mell organization of the book.

    The second problem of this book is that it’s targeted, not to a general audience, but to aspiring science-fiction writers. You would think that publisher Jim Baen, in his marketing genius, would aim for a layman’s audience numbering in the… oh… few millions. But instead, Sheffield passes his time pointing out potential “story ideas” where simply stating the state of current research would do just as well. Granted, this is an artifact of the book’s origin (it derives partly from a series of lectures given by Sheffield to a bunch of wanabee SF writers), but it’s still annoying to the (far numerous) readers without any interest in mining “story ideas” from this book.

    Another marketing misfire is more readily obvious, at least on the hardcover edition: As it is now common with Baen large editions, their art geniuses have slapped a coat of metallic paint on the cover, making it garishly unpleasant to look at. Of course, given the already-ugly nature of the illustration itself, this might have been done intentionally. Still, Borderlands of Science deserved a more restrained cover along the lines of most popular-science books.

    Even despite these various flaws, Borderlands of Science manages to be a pretty decent scientific vulgarization book. Sheffield writes with a certain amount of wit, and the result is a book that goes deeply into scientific jargon, but which always return before it’s too late. Even though the structure is a bit hesitant at times, there is a very complete table of content, index and many documented references.

    In short, a decent popular-science read for hard-SF fans.

    [January 2000: Bad news for Sheffield: The ideal limits-of-science book already exists, and is called Visions, by Michio Kaku. It actually begins with a question raised by Sheffield at the end of his book: “Is this the end of science?” and proceeds from there by saying that the basic discoveries have been nailed down, but that the science of mastery awaits… Read the review, or the book, for more details.]

  • Meg, Steve Alten

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 1997, 278 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-385-48905-6

    There are two ways to write a novel. The first one is to reach into your personal experiences, pull out your opinions and emotions about life and write a honestly moving narrative that works for you first, and everyone else after. The second way is to tailor a product to the marketplace, designing the flow of the novel to appeal to a large public and really aim for a mass audience. In a nutshell, that’s supposed to be the difference between “literature” and “bestsellers”.

    Self-proclaimed artists will try to make you believe that writing literature is considerably harder than writing a bestseller. But is it really so?

    While there is some truth to the widely-held observation that bestsellers are more formulaic than other types of fiction, it still takes great skill to put together the elements of a successful mass-market novel.

    It’s almost a given that first, a bestseller needs an intriguing premise. Meg not only promises something similar to JAWS by loosening a shark upon an unsuspecting human population, but actually promises more than JAWS by featuring something much bigger: A twenty-ton, sixty-foot-long Carcharodon Megalodon. “Meg” to its friends. An escaped Jurassic-era relic of unheard-of proportions: It features a head as big as a pickup truck armed with nine-inch-long teeth “with the serrated edges of a stainless-steel knife.” [P.4] And, being a shark, it has all of the superior perceptive and motor skills of the world’s most enduring predator.

    The Meg is introduced in the first two chapters. The human characters come much later. There’s the brilliant-but-flawed protagonist Jonas Taylor (no points for predicting what happens to a hero with a surname like that,) a paleontologist with a deep-reaching trauma. There’s his wife, an ambitious journalist with plans to discredit her husband in order to divorce him with justification. (No point for guessing what happens to such a conniving woman.) There’s Terry Tanaka, a young Asian woman with something to prove. Plus the usual array of colorful supporting characters, whether they’re allies or not. They’re realized competently, well-within the usual standards of the genre.

    What happens with this premise and these characters is, like you’d expect, a book-long monster hunt. First Jonas has to go to the Meg, deep down at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Then the Meg has to escape its natural habitat and wreak havoc, first in Hawaii then along the Californian coast. It’s all very exciting, just as we’d expect it.

    Ultimately, thrillers like Meg can be evaluated on their potential cinematographic strengths. And that where this novel truly shines. By the time one throwaway scene near the end basically destroys nine news helicopters in a mid-air crash, you can only grin in sadistic delight and buy the movie rights. A shark with a head as big as a pickup truck makes for memorable scenes!

    The remainder, characters, dialogue and psychological unsophistication, is just dressing on the cake. Meg isn’t JAWS, but it’s good enough to be a worthwhile read on its own. “Two Words: JURASSIC SHARK” says the end-cover blurb. Not a bad review, in a nutshell.

    [May 2007: I really tried to enjoy the next two entries in the Meg series, but they illustrate what happens to a good concept when you wring it dry. Both The Trench and Primal Waters fall into the trap ofdoing the same thing over and over again: The Meg gets loose, the Meg reappears and eats people, the Meg is captured, killed or driven away. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Primal Waters is a bit more interesting than the second tome thanks to some easy pot-shots at reality TV and a delirious scene involving baseball fans, but that’s about it. Plus, there’s something depressing about each novel beginning by driving accursed protagonist Jonas Taylor deeper in despair in order to give him some dramatic stakes. Alten: Let. It. Go.]

  • A Signal Shattered, Eric S. Nylund

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon/EOS, 1999, 378 pages, C$34.00 hc, ISBN 0-380-97514-9

    WARNING: Given that A Signal Shattered is a sequel, this review contains complete spoilers for Eric S. Nylund’s previous novel A Signal To Noise. If you haven’t read the first volume… you don’t want to know.

    Don’t you hate sequels? Tired retreads of a once-successful premise, shamelessly exploited for commercial gain? Scarcely original tacked-on adventures to characters who would otherwise enjoy a good, uneventful off-screen life?

    Well, A Signal Shattered, despite following the events of Eric S. Nylund’s Signal to Noise, isn’t a sequel in the most vulgar of terms. It’s quite apparent that this is meant to be the logical conclusion of the events of the first book; a fully intended extension. Indeed, this novel begins scant seconds after the end of the previous volume.

    Jack Potter is still stranded on the moon after Earth’s destruction. With him; a motley crew of monks, spies and assassins. Even though they survived the catastrophe, they’re still far from safe: their oxygen is running low, they don’t have much food and they’re all desperately tired. Within minutes, they’re also under attack by unknown forces. And there’s plenty of opposing sides, from Jack’s old friends to hostile alien forces…

    It’s a cliché to say that a book was “breathlessly paced”, but this is indeed the case with A Signal Shattered. The novel never stops, as crises are piled over new developments and Jack must cope with everything at once. This eventually takes its toll on the reader, who must eventually take a break from this breakneck pacing. Even with Nylund’s best intentions, the book is still 378 pages and even if it’s constantly exciting book, it’s not a short one. Fortunately, Nylund’s writing is sufficiently clear to carry the reader forward during the whole book.

    Fans of the first volume have certainly noted the ease with which Nylund played around with hard-edged scientific concepts, from biology to physics with a heavy emphasis on information science. This novel continues the trend, with Nylund even making a strong push toward Greg-Egan territory with the dizzying big-idea finale. While not as easily graspable as the ones in Signal to Noise, the techno-innovations in A Signal Shattered create a convincing aura of pure SFness.

    More than just a simply good conclusion to the story begun in Signal to Noise, A Signal Shattered also marks the potential beginning of a major new SF talent. If Nylund can keep up the clear writing, the fresh approach, the easy familiarity with techno-gadgets and the good pacing of his two latest SF books, he could easily become one of the next decade’s SF stars. Though it would help to keep the whole story in one volume…

    BRIEFLY: Nylund’s Dry Water is a contemporary fantasy that nevertheless shows his SF roots though an SF-writer protagonist, various classic references and a spirit of systematic extrapolation that underlines the best SF. Dry Water is unfortunately a bit too scattershot to succeed fully, bringing in disparate elements together instead of focusing on the strengths of the Really Interesting stuff. Impatient readers, for instance, could solely concentrate on the Larry Ngitis passages and skim the other viewpoint characters without missing much. Generally speaking, the book is at its strongest when strongly rooted in reality, which makes the various “Dry Water” digression more annoying than satisfactory. It also gets a big too big for its bounds, to the detriment of a nice yarn. Still, if not a recommended book, it remains an interesting one.

  • The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper, 1997, 301 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-101351-X

    Humans are not aquatic creatures. Even though our lineage most probably goes back to an H2O-saturated environment at some point, we’re the product of a few million years of straight land-based evolution. We are, in our current form, ridiculously ill-equipped to cope with water in large quantities.

    Maybe that why so much good literature has been about the sea. Melville’s Moby Dick, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea, etc… As comfortable landlubbers, we often forget how fundamentally inhospitable the ocean can be. Now here comes Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm to remind us of it once again.

    In October 1991, a combination of factors along the northeastern Atlantic coast all contributed to the creation of “a perfect storm” —a storm that could not have been worse. Caught in the middle of it: The Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat with a crew of six men. They never made it back to port. The Perfect Storm is, in part, the story of their demise.

    Not a cheery premise for a documentary, nor an easy one. How can we know what happened aboard a boat which disappeared at sea? Junger confronts the question in the introduction by stating up-front that he’s using descriptions of similar events to describe the fate of the Andrea Gail, that he resisted the impulsion to make up quotes, that he interviewed friends and relatives to get an idea of the men’s last days on shore. And, by and large, the book plays fair to this ideal, neither inventing or dramatizing facts. The narrative is filled with “it might have been the case”, “did these men…?”, “in similar cases” and other carefully-modulated modifiers. It doesn’t matter: The book creates a convincing aura of authenticity.

    Junger also sidesteps the question by adding other elements than the disappearance of the Andrea Gail to The Perfect Storm. We get to see the end of a yacht cruise, hair-raising rescues by National Guardsman and other dramatic events that happened during the storm of 1991. This broad focus helps maintain the interest in he book long after the Andrea Gail has gone under.

    As for the quality of the book itself… well, it’s obvious from the start that The Perfect Storm will be a superior read. Honest human interest bolsters technical details about the fishing industry and the result is both highly informative and compulsively readable. Junger not only did his research, but presents it in a way that’s almost unequalled. Few books attain the level of intense fascination created by Junger. The result is a memorable work of documentary fiction.

    A movie script has been adapted from The Perfect Storm, and is -as of this writing- undergoing the final stages of the primary shooting. It remains to be seen if the film will be able to translate Junger’s carefully researched facts and documentary vulgarization to the big screen. Initial gut reaction would seem to indicate otherwise and this, coupled to the anti-dramatic structure and the unhappy finale, might not presage well for the finished product. Still…

    The potential appeal for the book itself, in the meantime, is enormous. Non-fiction fans will find a book far better-written than the norm in genre. Docu-fiction fans will be fascinated by the accessible technical details and the meticulous research. Your basic reader, finally, will read the book in a single seating, grip the armrest of his comfy chair and change his mind about how he thinks we humans master the sea.

  • Virus Ground Zero, Ed Regis

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1996, 244 pages, C$31.00 hc, ISBN 0-671-55361-5

    In 1995, a book titled The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, caused a stir among the American public. A dramatic non-fiction account of Ebola outbreaks in Africa and in a Washington DC suburb, it was propelled to the top of the bestseller lists by a combination of good writing, great reviews and an uncanny sense of timing: A few weeks after its initial release, another Ebola outbreak in Zaire made headlines and bolstered sales of the book.

    Virus Ground Zero is, in many ways, a follow-up to The Hot Zone. It describes in detail the 1995 African outbreak. It draws an unofficial history of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the world’s foremost anti-viral agency. It also aims to puncture the myth of “the coming plague”, fostered in part by books like The Hot Zone. The result is a triumph of anecdotic storytelling, but a dismal structural failure.

    The framework of Virus Ground Zero is provided by the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, Zaire. Regis meticulously -but entertainingly- describes the evolution of the outbreak from the initial cases to the ceremonial end of the emergency. It’s a naturally gripping tale, with the detective-like work of tracking down the origin of the virus and the culture clash between American experts and third-world Zaire. Additionally, this being the nineties, the epidemic naturally becomes a media event, and the most blackly amusing parts of the book describe how the media presence in Kikwit was more numerous than the CDC virus experts, and far more obnoxious.

    Regis adds to this report an unofficial (read; not always laudatory) history of the Center for Disease Control. Born out of the need to control Malaria in the United States in the 1940s, the CDC quickly grew outside its first assigned bounds to take on more and more duties outside malaria control or even disease control. By the nineties, the CDC had become a massive bureaucracy where only a tenth of all resources were directly assigned to infectious diseases. But the CDC can at least boasts of some significant successes: In the seventies, their efforts managed to erase smallpox, one of humankind’s oldest enemies, from the face of the Earth. This story, and many others, are interwoven in the book.

    And there lies the most significant weakness of Virus Ground Zero; a lack of organization. From the beginning, Kikwit crisis and CDC history are alternately covered, without clear chapter distinctions or indications. It’s as if Regis flits from subject to subject as he likes it, ignoring chronology and often leaving “cliffhangers” at the end of each snippet, which won’t be answered until much later in the book. Such a structure is fine for novels, but for a serious nonfiction scientific vulgarization, it’s a fatal mistake. Even worse; there is no index. You can’t reasonably use Virus Ground Zero as a reference book because there’s no way of quickly locating an element. How these types of blatant omission still make it in today’s publishing industry are left as a perverse exercise to the reader.

    The real shame of Virus Ground Zero is that Regis is, basically, a rather good vulgarizer. His writing style is clear and witty. He selects good anecdotes and presents them in a way that make a point clear. He isn’t afraid to criticize when it’s appropriate. His explanations are clear and to the point. His central thesis -based on his examination of the non-event that was the Kikwit outbreak- that there’s no such thing as “a coming plague” is carefully documented and does seem reasonable.

    But presentation is often as important as content, and so Virus Ground Zero fails on factors external to the content. There would be several easy way to “fix” the book, from a simple index to a complete chronological re-organization of the book, but the current product is a nightmare of structure, a bunch of good stories impossible to consult efficiently.

  • Earth Made of Glass, John Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 416 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-55161-3

    Long-time John Barnes readers already know that he’s fascinated by the fate of societies. His first few novels were all hard-SF extrapolations of societies radically different from our own. A Million Open Doors was especially interesting, a tale of a carefree, artistic young man abruptly transferred into a repressive pragmatic theocracy. It many ways, it’s Barnes most enjoyable novel, with its carefully paced action, clean writing and upbeat finale.

    Earth Made of Glass is an indirect sequel to A Million Open Doors. It takes place twelve years later and stars the two protagonists of the previous volume, but doesn’t really depend on the first book for full comprehension. Girault and Margaret have become special agents for the central government of the Thousand Cultures human civilization. Their job is to ensure that the integration of new cultures in the intersystem teleporter network is done without incident.

    Briand is their biggest challenge yet: An inhospitable planet at the exception of a few secluded areas, it is host to two cultures who absolutely can’t tolerate each other. Girault and Margaret must not only find a way to eradicate this common hate and bring Briand in the Thousand Cultures, but also work on the problems that have begun to plague their marriage… guess what will be the most difficult task?

    On the bright side, Earth Made of Glass vividly illustrates Barnes’ biggest strengths; clear writing, sustained plotting, a wealth of fun details and solid characters. Even better is his fascination with social dynamics; SF seems to be Barnes’ device to explore human politics and the result is sufficiently different from most SF to ensure interest. The ideas are there and they’re worth listening to.

    On the other hand, this novel is less successful than its prequel for several reasons. While the societies explored here are complex and detailed, the wealth of minutiae often threatens to overwhelm the narration. Then there’s the fact that most Western readers won’t care a whit about either the Tamil or Maya societies—maybe that’s the intention, but it certainly doesn’t pack as much punch as a good ol’ Medievalist civilisation. (what about a non-literary society, too?)

    That that’s nothing compared to how the characters behave. For someone as finely trained in the arts of artistic subtlety, Girault lets far too many clues pass him by. (Even distracted readers will pick up on elements of the conclusion long before the narrator) For someone as pragmatic and level-headed as Margaret, her behavioral motives appear awfully thin. As a matter of fact, everyone‘s motives don’t quite ring true, from Margaret to Girault, Ix and Auvaiyar… a lot as if Barnes just moved pieces across a board without covering up his efforts. It’s not always fun to see likable character acting stupidly; by the end of the book, you’ll be ready to want to slap around most of the characters for being such idiots.

    Then there’s the bittersweet finale, when Barnes reverts to his early pessimism. The point might be valid, but it doesn’t help that it’s such a downer; what about the idea of structural balance?

    Fortunately (or not), this volume is rife with setups for (at least) a third volume chronicling Girault’s adventures. While Earth Made of Glass proves to be a often-frustrating mixed-bag of good ideas and bad choices, it remains sufficiently interesting to please old fans and whip up anticipation for further books. This reviewer can’t wait to see Girault teach the finer points of courtisanship to representatives of alien civilisations…