Reviews

  • Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

    Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, April 2011) Second full feature to emerge from the Grindhouse trailers, Hobo with a Shotgun proudly embraces its exploitation raison d’être and delivers an old-fashioned schlocky action B-movie.  Shot in Nova Scotia (and partially financed with Canadian tax dollars), this conscious attempt to re-create violent movies from the eighties straddles a fine line between ironic comedy and earnest mayhem.  The title is the plot of the film, set in a city that recalls the worst paranoid fantasies about New York at its lowest point of urban decay: It’s useless to discuss narrative coherence in a film that’s not meant to have much of it.  Fortunately, the exploitation-movie tone is well-captured: While the film is extremely gory, the violence feels more absurdly ridiculous than disgusting –and considering that an element of the climax is a lead character stabbing a villain with the exposed bones of a maimed arm, that’s saying something.  In-between the overdone synth-heavy score, spitting melodrama, garish colors, buckets of blood, grainy pictures and ham-fisted sequences of gratuitous evil, it goes without saying that this film will appeal to a certain viewership: It takes a special kind of cinematographic literacy to enjoy the retro-VHS atmosphere that make up this film’s peculiar charm.  Rutger Hauer growls his way expertly in the title role, while the villains make faces at the camera and Molly Dunsworth does her job just looking cute.  The end could have used an epilogue, there are a few underwhelming sequences in the mix and it would have been nice if, like Machette, the film could have included some deeper social relevance, but otherwise, it’s hard to think of a recent film that achieves its aim as surely as Hobo with a Shotgun… even if those aims are far, far below those of respectable cinema.

  • Limitless (2011)

    Limitless (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, April 2011) Newsflash : Smart movie about a smart man getting smarter pleases movie reviewer who think he’s smart.  Pro-intelligence biases made obvious, here’s what works in Limitless: a clever script that has way too much fun exploring the wish-fulfillment potential of artificially-enhanced intelligence; Neil Burger’s compelling direction; Bradley Cooper’s increasing stature as an actor who can do both charm and intelligence; an ending that’s considerably more upbeat than Alan Glynn’s source novel; and an overall attitude that, yes, more intelligence can actually be beneficial.  Even in indulging in such traditional faux-pas as voiceover narration and a flash-forward prologue, the script is witty, darkly amusing and ends on a high note.  Visually, Limitless deliberately flourishes along with its characters: the opening credits zoom-in alone is a thing of wonder.  There’s no doubt that Limitless could have been better: neither Abbie Cornish nor Robert de Niro have much to do; the main character isn’t as compelling as he should be; the ending is a bit rough (albeit kind of cool); some third-act revelations aren’t surprising and there are at least two really dumb plot holes that even moderately-smart viewers will be able to spot (ie: Always pay off your psychotic bookie first and Always secure your supply chain.)  Still, Limitless remains fun to watch and, significantly, marks the second of three decent SF film consecutively shown in theatres as of early April 2001 alongside The Adjustment Bureau and Source Code.  Who could complain?

  • Source Code (2011)

    Source Code (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, April 2011) I wasn’t as fond of Duncan Jones’ Moon as a lot of people were, but I was really interested in seeing his follow-up effort, and Source Code does not disappoint.  The theme of the deceived protagonist is still there, the setting is just as constrained and the scientific premises is just as wobbly (not to mention a nonsensical title), but Jones here has a bigger budget, a bigger concept, bigger stars and a faster pace.  Ben Ripley’s disaster-movie premise script is ingenious, but it’s paired with other well-paced revelations and the interweaving of both plotlines is effectively achieved.  Jake Gyllenhaal is hitting his stride as a heroic protagonist, with good supporting work from Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and a halting Jeffrey Wright.  Still, the real star here is writer/director Jones, who delivers a fast, clever and entertaining film with some depth and artful gloss.  The ending manages to be elegiac and optimistic at once, and provides a surprising amount of thematic depth for what could have easily been a straight-up genre exercise.  We don’t get quite enough SF movies like Source Code, but given the boost it will give to Jones’ career, chances are that we will get a few more.

  • Terminal Freeze, Lincoln Child

    Terminal Freeze, Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 2009, 320 pages, C$27.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-385-51551-1

    After years of joint bestselling success, it’s been interesting to see the Preston/Child writing duo strike out individually.  This now gives the prolific duo an average of three books per year, and presumably the opportunity to try things on their own that they wouldn’t attempt in their collaborations given readers’ expectations for the team.  They are, after all, seasoned writing professionals who fully understand the conventions of the thriller genre, and that usually works to their advantage.

    Not always, though, and Lincoln Child’s Terminal Freeze is another example in his bibliography that shows how writers can combine original settings with familiar plot points and yet end up with disappointing novels.

    To Child’s credit, it does take a long time for the disappointment to set in: As is often the case with high-concept thrillers, the first hundred pages are more interesting than the rest.  We find ourselves deep in Alaska, at a research facility loosely guarded by the US Army.  The first set of characters we meet are a group of scientists making the best out of global warming in studying the composition of retreating glaciers.  But a sudden break in the ice reveals something far more interesting: a creature of some sort, encased in a gigantic ice cube.  It doesn’t take much more to get a documentary film crew to land, taking over the camp in the name of TV entertainment.  Meanwhile, vague mystical portent of doom from the local native population and a few shocking documents discovered in a long-classified official archive set the stage for the inevitable upcoming doom.

    The setting and its atmosphere are a good chunk of Terminal Freeze’s early interest.  The idea of a group of scientists working high above the Arctic Circle in one of the most isolated places in the world is good for a suspense story, and the sequence in which a character goes into a recently-declassified government archive to uncover an unexpected secret is the type of good foreboding sequence that any thriller ought to have.  Even as the plot pieces slowly come together, the arrival of a documentary crew and the subsequent look behind the scenes of a supposedly “documentary” shoot are good to keep up our interest.  (“You, scientist: look amazed!  Everyone else, act as if you’re seeing the creature for the first time!”)

    Then it gets really familiar really quickly.  The large frozen cat that the scientists think they can glimpse in the ice proves to be something far more dangerous, and before long we get characters dying left and right, pursued in a military station by… a monster.

    That’s the point where readers can be forgiven for thinking “Really?  Another monster thriller?” and losing interest in the novel.  Because, despite the interesting setting, Terminal Freeze soon succumbs to the theorem of converging premises and ends up feeling like countless monster movies of the past, with a small group of humans (scientists, soldiers, entertainers) doing their best to kill something that escapes the usual laws of nature.  A too-quick look at ice-trucking (a topic which would probably sustain a novel of its own) isn’t enough to save the latter half of Terminal Freeze from terminal boredom.  It’s trivially easy to guess who’s going to become monster-chow; it’s considerably harder to actually care about it.  The epilogue contains a revelation that will only be interesting to readers who aren’t used to Science-Fiction –which, to be honest, is probably most of the book’s audience: Child keeps writing SF novels disguised as thrillers, but uses those elements so loosely that they become frustrating to genre fans.  (It also helps if Child’s readership has a short memory, because Terminal Freeze ends on a note similar to the epilogue of his own previous Deep Storm.)

    Terminal Freeze completes its dramatic arc by ploughing into the ground after a promising launch.  After four solo Child novels, this isn’t much of a surprise.  As a writer, his gift is for scene-setting… not plot development: Child follows genre conventions so faithfully that he doesn’t have room to breathe once he starts developing his stories.  All of his previous novels, from Utopia to Death Match to Deep Storm are blessed with great premises, but they all falter into more conventional novels by the time the second act rolls around.  The narrative momentum created in the first half of the book is usually enough to sustain readers through the less-interesting conclusions, but only just so.  Maybe there’s something to be said for the combined strengths of collaborations.

  • Son of Rambow (2007)

    Son of Rambow (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2011) I was probably expecting a bit too much of this one.  Son of Rambow got great reviews and good word of mouth, but ultimately remains a kind of film that doesn’t really do much for me: a coming-of-age adventure in filmmaking featuring an irritating pair of characters and a love of making movies that feels more self-centered than infectious.  When a flamboyant minor character takes over the film to a degree that feels as if the movie should revolve around him, it’s a sign that the main attraction isn’t working.  Son of Rambow feels unpolished, scattered and even unpleasant at times: the gags play on nostalgia for the early eighties and a particular affection for the first Rambo film, neither of which I have in abundant quantities.  What remains is a tepid comedy, sometimes enlivened by welcome cinematic flights of fancy.  I suspect that Son of Rambow will strike a deeper chord with other viewers, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a bit of a snoozer.  The DVD supplements, including a making-of and an audio commentary track in which everyone and everything is brilliant or excellent, don’t do anything to make the film feel any better.

  • Black Snake Moan (2006)

    Black Snake Moan (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2011) The marketing of this film scream southern exploitation, but the end result is more concerned with blues music and moral redemption than it is about tough-love cures for nymphomania.  Samuel L. Jackson turns in an impressive performance as a retired-bluesman gentleman farmer who sees himself obligated to reform a deeply troubled girl who ends up in his front yard.  (Christina Ricci, with a performance that’s both convincing and topless.) The surprise of the film however, is to see to what degree it manages to incorporate music as a guiding theme: Jackson himself is credible as a bluesman, and the soundtrack of the film holds up by itself.  But that’s not as much of a surprise when considering that Black Snake Moan (titled from a classic blues number) is written and directed by Craig Brewer, whose previous film was Hustle & Flow: The two films share a number of similarities going beyond southern atmosphere and setting, to disgraced protagonists finding redemption in music.  While Black Snake Moan doesn’t have many surprises and seems to move just a bit too slowly at times, it’s a success in presenting unusual characters in desperate situations and making us care for them.  Jackson is a force of nature in this film, and the nature of the character lets him show a little bit more of his range than usual.  The film isn’t nearly as offensive as the marketing would let you believe, and even if it cuts dramatic corners once in a while (the ending is a bit weak), it does feel a bit deeper than its first few minutes would suggest.  A few tonal adjustments may have helped make it a bit easier to consider… but would it have destroyed the film’s voice?  The DVD’s supplements (a few documentaries and an engaging commentary by director Brewer) lay to rest some of those questions as they explain the film’s origins in the director’s panic attacks, the weaving of musical and religious themes, as well as the advantages of shooting a film “at home” near Memphis.

  • Among Others, Jo Walton

    Among Others, Jo Walton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2010, 302 pages, C$28.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-7653-2153-4

    I have the good fortune to count Jo Walton amongst my acquaintances, and I only name-drop because I want to establish some credibility when I say that Among Others is a book much like Jo Walton herself: Smart, kind, funny, perceptive and unapologetically in love with written Science-Fiction and Fantasy.  The book itself is a subtle fantasy, a tribute to the power of reading as self-actualization and, I suspect, a fair chunk of autobiography as well.

    Taking place in-between Wales and England, Among Others brings us back to the savage days of 1979-1980 in diary form.  Our narrator/heroine, Mori, is not in the best of circumstances.  She and her twin sister may have saved the world from the evil that is their mother, but not without consequences: her twin sister is dead, her mother hates her, and she’s been exiled to a boarding school in accursed England, far from home and the fairies that have come to be her companions.  Mercifully, Walton doesn’t go back in time to explain the backstory, instead focussing on Mori’s life at the boarding school and the difficult process of reintegration as she comes to grip with the death of her twin sister, one diary entry at a time.

    As a fantasy novel, Among Other is subtle to the point of being almost deniable.  The fairies that occupy post-industrial Wales are neither good nor bad, but they certainly use Mori for their own end.  When she completes a ritual to shut down a poisonous factory near her town, it doesn’t crumble to dust as much as it closes down the next day, causing thousands to lose their jobs in the process.  Later, when Mori wishes for a group of like-minded people to ease her loneliness, she ends up discovering a local SF book club.  Magic, in Mori’s world, may be about rejigging cause-and-effect as much as it may be a metaphor for taking control one one’s destiny.  (Daydreaming between chapters of the novel, I found myself tangentially wondering about those people for whom everything seems to go right –it doesn’t take much to imagine them as unconscious magicians in a universe that allows for subtle nudges to destiny.)

    A sufficiently blinkered reader could read Among Others as fanciful realism, but that’s missing the point of Walton’s affectionate blend of teenage memoirs, genre references and non-metaphorical fantasy elements.  While the paper-heavy ending has enough thematic resonances to make any book-lover purr aloud, it’s a real, albeit unconventional fantasy.  Any other kind of reading is being wilfully obstinate.

    This being said, Among Others is most rewarding as a novel aimed at genre readers.  Mori, seeking reintegration in the absence of her twin sister and isolated by her exile to a boarding school, soon turns to the local library and the available genre fiction.  As a diary of an omnivorous teenage reader, Among Others is filled with in-jokes about classic Science Fiction and Fantasy as Mori reads a book every two days and jots down notes to herself.  It’s also, perhaps more crucially, an uplifting homage to books and to readers and how even lonely introverts can find a community and a place in the world.  Mori is a tough, resilient, sympathetic protagonist –the things she brushes off would traumatize most so-called “normal” people, and her genre-influenced mindset is another tool she uses to understand her environment.  Among Others will be a comforting read to anyone who spent a lot of time in libraries as a teenager, and those who even today, as fully-functional adults, can recall how they were shaped by their reading.

    It all amounts to a lovely novel, fascinating in the details as much as it’s interesting in its overall dramatic arc.  I suspect that Among Others is designed to appeal first and foremost to avid readers; casual fans of fantasy may not find as much here to love as those who have undergone extended loneliness like Mori.  At the same time, it’s a fantasy novel that deals in shades of meaning, subtle moments and complex characters.  It’s satisfying from beginning to end, and it lends itself to fascinating conversations.  It’s an ideal novel for book-clubs and book lovers.

    But don’t tell Jo I wrote that, as I have a contrarian reputation to maintain.

  • Ocean’s Eleven (1960)

    Ocean’s Eleven (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2011) Remakes should seek to improve on their originals, and the best way to do that is to remake something that failed to fully deliver on its promises.  So it is that if the 2001 remake Ocean’s Eleven is quite a bit better than its original 1960 incarnation, it’s in no small part due to how flawed the first film was.  The idea of robbing several Las Vegas casinos at once is good, but the limits of circa-1960 filmmaking and the indulgences of the film’s production combine to ensure that the film never fully takes off.  Part of the problem is seeing a fifty-year-old film: expectations have risen dramatically in expecting a film to reflect reality, and watching Ocean’s 11 now is a reminder about soundstage filming, languid pacing, unconvincing blocking and non-naturalistic dialogue: The film feels fake even without getting into the very different reality of 1960. Never mind the fashions: how about the casual racism and sexism?  Adding to the film’s very distinctive nature is the nature of the production itself, mixing musical numbers with then-celebrity cameos, often to puzzling effect such as when Shirley MacClaine stops the film cold for two minutes’ worth of drunken lushness, or when Sammy Davis Jr. allows himself a tune or two.  Still, even a flawed Ocean’s 11 is worth watching: “E-O-Eleven” sticks in mind, the time-warp effect is fascinating (from 1960, keep in mind that World War Two was less than fifteen years distant –shorter than the Gulf War is to 2011), the coolness of the characters still works and if the film itself feels artificial and interminable, some individual moments stand out.  The remake is sufficiently different (and better) that it doesn’t spoil the original.  The “Danny Ocean box-set” DVD comes with a welcome assortment of extra features, including an audio commentary.

  • The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

    The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, April 2011) There’s been a dearth of courtroom drama over the past few years, and The Lincoln Lawyer isn’t just a good return to the form, it’s about as good an adaption of Michael Connelly’s original novel as fans could have hoped for.  As with most readers of the book learning about the film’s casting, I wasn’t sold on Matthew McConaughey as protagonist-lawyer Mickey Haller: I had always envisioned Haller as more mature and cynical than McConaughey’s typical romantic-comedy laid-back persona.  So it’s a surprise to see him return to serious drama as an older, wiser, far worldlier presence, fully comfortable in the role of a professional defence lawyer operating from his chauffeur-driven car.  Brad Furman’s direction fully embraces the California-noir style of the novel, Los Angeles’ broad avenues offering as many dangers as tiny back-streets.  The cinematography is bright, sunny, energetic and compelling.  Rounding up the main cast are good supporting performances by Ryan Phillippe (detestable as always), Marisa Tomei and William H. Macy.  While the twists and turns of the plotting are familiar, they’re well-handled and make up for a refreshing legal drama that proves that execution is often more important than fresh concepts.  The Lincoln Lawyer may be less reflective about the role of defence lawyers than the book, but it still delivers enough legal manoeuvres to keep things interesting.  For some, it may be the start of a franchise (there are now three further Haller adventures on the shelves); for most, though, it’s a solid, well-paced, well-made crime drama with a cynical smirk: Exactly the kind of film that’s always welcome.

  • Let me in (2010)

    Let me in (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, March 2011) Like most people who enjoyed the Swedish horror film Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In), I really wasn’t looking forward to its American remake: why trifle with such a recent and solid film?  But as (re)writer/director Matt Reeves shows, it’s possible for big-budget American films to understand what works in their source material and make sure that the same quality is preserved in the remake.  Purists will be happy to note that few of the essentials have been changed in Let Me In: The story beats are similar and the imagery is familiar.  The adaptation is more accessible to American audiences, but not necessarily blunter or more exploitative.  From time to time, the remake even improves on a few sequences: The remake’s highlight is a spectacular in-car shot leading to a crash, Reeves finds comfort in yellow sodium-vapour streetlamps and both young actors are very good in the lead roles.  In fact, the only thing I really miss from the original is the finale’s haunting underwater one-shot, here replaced by a far less effective series of more conventional cuts.  Taken on its own, Let Me In remains a good horror film, effective in part because it differs from genre conventions and doesn’t bow to expectations.  The relationship between hero and vampire is disturbing in its own right, while the coda suggests that the pair’s future reflects another pair earlier in the film.  While this remake was still largely unnecessary, it’s good to see Reeves succeed at another genre-horror outing after the spectacular Cloverfield: he did the best anyone could be expected to do with a difficult project.

  • One of our Thursdays is Missing, Jasper Fforde

    One of our Thursdays is Missing, Jasper Fforde

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Viking, 2011, 362 pages, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 978-0-670-02252-6

    Jasper Fforde is not what we’d call an ordinary writer, and his novels are not what we’d call ordinary fiction.  Euphemistically called a “writer of humorous fantasy”, Fforde is constantly willing to engage in a playful exploration of genre fiction.  His novels feature characters breaking out of their novels, communications by footnotes, time-travel from one volume to another, an exploration of genre fiction as a grand library, cheerfully absurd parallel universe and more meta-fictional jokes than can be listed on a single bibliography.

    The fifth entry in the “Thursday Next” ended, as faithful readers may recall, with a heck of a send-off: the Bookworld threatened by a serial killer, a dirigible going down in flames and Thursday radioing back to headquarters that they may have a problem.

    If you were expecting a sequel to that particular moment, however, expect to be mystified: As One of Our Thursdays is Missing begins, we’re dealing with an entirely different Thursday: The written one, portraying the “real” Thursday Next’s adventures within Bookworld.  Never mind continuity, especially when Bookworld itself is remade into a geographically-based metaphorical island.  (There’s a map.)  The new plot is that the real Thursday Next is missing, and the written one feels compelled to take a leave of absence to find her.  Among other perils, the written Thursday has to leave Bookworld to go investigate in the real world… becoming a human for the first time, and trying to figure out how the real Thursday lives from the clues left to her in the fictionalized novels in which she plays the real one.

    Yes, the meta is quite heavy with this one.

    Fortunately, it’s all handled with Fforde’s usual light-hearted flair.  The rules of the universe having changed (there are several hilarious excerpt to “Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion” to help us along the way), and re-learning them alongside the similarly-befuddled Thursday isn’t too painless.  Fforde’s usual invention is on display as he features a robot companion, a dangerous mimefield, a battle in micro-gravity, peace talks between warring genres, a trip upriver in a rigidly-defined subgenre and more meta-fictional games than you can quite grasp at first.  (One word: Toast.)

    The highlight of the book, however, has to be the sequence in which the written Thursday is thrown into the real world.  Suddenly, life becomes far more complicated for someone who has to get used to gravity, heartbeats and the rest of real life that never makes it into fiction.  It’s not a brilliant piece of invention, but it’s a neat and revealing take on the venerable “visiting alien asking what it means to be human” trope.

    It’s all amusing and eminently readable, but in-between the inventions and wordplay there’s a real question as to whether Fforde has simply given up on the continuity of his series (if continuity was ever his intent) and where the series can go from here.  But that may not be much of a concern given the twists and turns that Fforde has provided in his series so far.  It does feel like a discontinuity, though, and it will be up to the next volume to patch things up: Fans can hope to get a satisfying closure to the fifth volume, but at this point the entire series is really in Fforde’s very unusual hands.

  • Paul (2011)

    Paul (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2011) The mainstreaming of geek culture over the past decade has meant as many mainstream products aimed at the geek demographics than geek attitudes adopted into the mainstream.  So that’s how we end up with Paul, a broadly-accessible comedy about two geeks encountering an alien while road-tripping through the US.  Working without director Edgar Wright, comedy duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost pair up with Greg Mottola to deliver a comedy that’s surprisingly less geeky than either Shaun of the Dead or even Hot Fuzz.  Given the change in director, it’s no surprise if the cinematic grammar of the film is far more sedate, more conventional and not quite as bitingly funny: As one would expect, it’s closer to Mottola’s Adventureland than Wright’s Scott Pilgrim.  But this different kind of atmosphere reflects the different nature of the plot: Featuring a charming and foul-mouthed gray alien, Paul works as an amiable road trip film, featuring two spacey heroes and one down-to-Earth alien who may be more human than the humans.  Sometimes, though, the film missteps: some of the violence is surprising, the profanity and media references can be tiresome and the two lead actors are far too old to play such socially retarded characters: A comparison with the similarly-themed Fanboys shows that what’s charming at age 18 can feel just a bit sad at 40.  Yet it’s hard to remain disappointed for long at a film that generally works as it should: if it’s not quite as funny, insightful or surprising as it could be, it’s still a generally good time at the movies, and a welcome comedic counterpoint to the slew of other alien-invasion films we’re seeing at the moment.

  • Gideon’s Sword, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

    Gideon’s Sword, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Grand Central, 2011, 342 pages, C$29.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-446-56432-8

    We all know that book reviewers are useless: nobody pays attention to them, they’re wasting their time writing for little artistic or commercial reward and they wouldn’t exist at all if books went away.  Still, it doesn’t mean that they’re always wrong.

    When reviewers started muttering that the Preston/Child thrillers featuring Aloysius Pendergast had grown stale and repetitive, they were probably echoing something that Preston/Child themselves knew.  Thriller readers thrive on a moderate amount of novelty, and after ten novels featuring the character (eight of them published yearly between 2002 and 2010), a creatively refreshing break seemed in order.  As it happens, Preston/Child aren’t giving up on Pendergast (an eleventh novel is slated for later in 2011), but they are broadening their horizons a bit, not only through their individual novels, but also through a new series featuring brand-new character Gideon Crew.

    Crew exists in the same universe as Pendergast (they’re linked by eccentric billionaire Eli Glinn), but he’s a substantially different protagonist.  Whereas Pendergast is the archetypical wizard, Crew is a trickster: He manipulates people like others hack computers.  Whereas Pendergast will gain entry to a building by showing his FBI pass, deducing something amazing and blustering through, Crew will dress up, impersonate someone else and sneak past security undetected.  There’s probably an interesting crossover event in the future for both characters, but for now Gideon’s Sword is a chance for Preston/Child to focus on a new protagonist.

    As with many origin stories, it takes a while for the throat-scratching to end.  A lengthy prologue sets up Crew as a genius with a burning desire to avenge his betrayed father.  Once the vengeance is complete, however, he gets both an offer and a sentence: Eli Glinn has noticed the subtlety of Crew’s vengeance, and wants to hire him as a freelance operator on complex cases.  At the same time, Crew is told that he’s got an incurable medical condition.  One that will likely kill him within a few months… a few years at most.

    But there’s little time for Gideon to reflect on his death sentence.  Before long he’s involved in a breathless race around New York City to find out what he can about a mysterious Chinese scientist and the string of numbers he whispered after a car crash.  Taking full advantage of their NYC playground, Preston/Child end up taking a closer look at a lesser-known feature of the city; Hart Island, where unidentified bodies and body parts from all of New York City are buried.  (For some extra adventure, go to the authors’ web site for an unauthorized tour of the area.)

    The result is a novel that feels lighter and faster-paced than the last few Preston/Child’s Pendergast novels.  Crew, being younger and unencumbered by Pendergast’s upper-class upbringing, is more impulsive and fallible.  His methods are different, and by renewing their cast of character, the authors also clean up the atmosphere of their book.

    It’s not a complete success, though: Gideon’s Sword is designed to be less weighty than the Pendergast novels, and it does feel less substantial.  While the streamlined plot moves faster and prevents Preston/Child from overusing some familiar plotting devices, it also makes Gideon’s Sword feel a bit lightweight compared to their other novels.  Story-wise, there’s a bit of unpleasantness when Crew gets someone else killed by his actions –since the series is to continue (Gideon’s Corpse is scheduled for January 2012), one would expect a bit of remorse to surface.  But when it comes to future installments, one has to wonder about Gideon’s built-in expiration date.  Either he’s slated to die, bringing an unsatisfying end to the series, or Preston/Child will find a rabbit in their bag of tricks to save Gideon from his timely end.  Let’s wait and see which way it will go.

    In the meantime, despite a few odd criticisms, Gideon’s Sword does feel like a welcome break from the Pendergast routine.  It’s not entirely a triumph, but it’s not a failure either, and it does provide the kind of entertainment that thriller readers are expecting.  But really; seeing the Preston/Child name on the cover, you don’t need the dubious advice of a book reviewer to tell you so.

  • Hard Landing, Lynne Heitman

    Hard Landing, Lynne Heitman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Onyx, 2001, 424 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-40972-8

    I have a strange sense of humour, so when I looked over my stack of things to read in order to stock up for an imminent series of plane flights, my eye naturally gravitated toward Lynne Heitman’s Hard Landing, a book whose covers promised plenty of airborne mayhem.  (“Fasten your seat belts.”)  Where better to appreciate the white-knuckle thrills of aviation gone wrong than from within a plane?  As you can guess, I’m not a nervous flyer…

    But the first surprise of Hard Landing it how little of it takes place on planes.  Sure, there’s an airplane crash distantly mentioned in the prologue.  Otherwise, though, this is an aviation thriller with both feet planted on the ground: It begins as thirty-something narrator Alex Shanahan lands at Boston’s Logan airport.  She’s supposed to start as the manager of operations for Majestic Airlines the next day, but the local union has decided to show her a lesson, and before she can even take off her high heels, Alex abruptly has to manage a crisis manufactured by her own employees.

    It doesn’t get any better as the crisis is resolved and Alex formally takes on the reins of her new job.  Not only is she taking over from a predecessor who committed suicide, there are plenty of reasons to believe that it wasn’t suicide.  The union seems controlled by professional slackers; higher management is less than helpful; there are probably traitors in her office; Majestic Airlines’ recent history is both complicated and troublesome; and her efforts to find the truth are putting her in danger.

    In-between the rest, her efforts to settle, make friends and deal with a failed romance also take up their share of time.  Alex’s first-person narration goes from one crisis to the next, credibly portraying a good woman thrown-in well over her head.  By the time she’s plotting with some disgruntled workers to expose a conspiracy with far-reaching impact within her own company, Hard Landing has managed to become a gripping tale without many of the usual plot drivers of airline thrillers.  Even by limiting her plotting to the ground, Heitman manages to wring a considerable amount of narrative energy from a sympathetic narrator, major problems and an unusual look at an aspect of commercial flying that most of us forget about.

    Because, let’s face it: few travelers actually think about the complex logistics of airlines operations until they go wrong.  But Heitman (herself a writer with considerable experience in the airline business) is able to quickly sketch the enormous amount of stress in coordinating the activity behind the counter and under the planes.  Hard Landing should appeal to fans of procedural thrillers and docu-fictive novels such as Airport: It’s a painless and fascinating look at an entirely new world, and it’s almost instantly credible.

    It’s also effective at setting an actual story within that world.  Hard Landing may not be quite the hard-edged thriller promised by its cover:  It does blend in quite a bit of romance, manages its private investigation in a distinctly feminine fashion (a chunk of the mystery hinges on discovering that Alex’s predecessor dealt with a lonely-hearts operation) and, as previously mentioned, spends very little time in the air.  But the result is a pleasant surprise rather than a disappointment: It’s an unusual, pleasant low-key thriller, and it more than held up my attention on four successive commercial flights.  I may even have smiled a little bit more than usual at the folks behind the counter.

  • Cowboy Angels, Paul McAuley

    Cowboy Angels, Paul McAuley

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pyr, 2011 reprint of 2007 original, 363 pages, C$20.00 pb, ISBN 978-1-61614-251-3

    Like most enthusiastic readers, my overall tastes may not change much, but there are definite ebbs and flows at the edges.  Freakishly attentive readers of these online reviews have probably noticed how much non-fiction I’ve been reviewing over the past two years, and that does reflect a broad tendency in my reading habits. As I may have explained elsewhere, SF is a bipolar genre currently undergoing a depressive phase, filled with cookie-cutter copies of the same impending apocalypse, or the same retro-idealized alternate realities.  Unsurprisingly, I’m having a harder time even identifying five good SF novels per year.

    Still, I’m always willing to acknowledge that I haven’t read everything, and here Pyr runs to the rescue by reprinting Paul McAuley’s Cowboy Angels, four years after its original British release.  Since I hadn’t been able to secure a final copy of the novel in the years since its publication (A trip to the UK netted me an autographed edition I latter discovered to be an Advance Reader’s Copy, and I tend to avoid reading those as a matter of principle), I was really looking forward to this one.  McAuley may be an uneven writer, but when he’s good he’s really good.  Fortunately, this is one of his good books.  From the very first few pages, I was hooked: Writing in a style best described as a muscular revival of cold-war espionage thrillers, McAuley grabs on to a good idea and uses it to explore a fascinating theme.

    In the world of Cowboy Angels, a sliver of the multiverse in which Alan Turing moved to the USA has managed to discover the secret of travel between parallel dimensions.  Letting no good imperialistic opportunity go to waste, this has led to an aggressive program of American power projection.  Bringing democracy, technology and favourable trade deals to other version of itself, the “Real” United States has spent most of its time between 1963 and 1980 using a mixture of special personnel and military forces to impose its idea of freedom over other worlds.  As the novel begins, however, the appetite for such adventures has run out: Jimmy Carter has been elected on a platform of gradual retreat, and the veterans of The Company are looking at semi-voluntary retirement.

    But not all Company personnel are willing to go gently into the night, and when protagonist Stone is asked to come out of peaceful retirement to apprehend an ex-colleague gone rogue, he eventually learns of an ambitious plot to move the “Real” United States back to empire-building.  It gets quite a bit wilder after that, with big ideas thrown around in-between obvious parallels between the Real and the faltering imperial ambitions of modern-day America.  No wonder the novel took a while before being published in the US…

    If nothing else, Cowboy Angels reached me at the exact right time, as I was thirsting for a novel of that calibre.  It’s a well-handled SF thriller, with big ideas, plenty of real-world thematic resonance, tough-guy characters and a few vertiginous twists that put the sense of wonder back in science-fiction.  For all of its world-weary tough-guy cynicism adapted from Cold War thrillers, Cowboy Angels is also packed with intriguing riffs on SF concepts, blending them into a series of revelations and ironies fit to activate the cognitive rush characteristic of the best Science Fiction.  The ending is a bit too abrupt to deliver full satisfaction to the bruised characters, yet perfectly-timed from a thematic point of view.

    The rapid pacing, tough characters and high stakes won’t fail to please readers looking for old-fashioned Science-Fiction adventures.  McAuley, whose fiction is usually dour, has a bit of fun in this novel (the version of reality closest to ours is called the “Nixon Sheaf” and it doesn’t look quite as bad as some of the alternatives) and the result is refreshing.  While I don’t expect most readers to be as receptive to this novel as I was while reading it, Cowboy Angels now easily finds a place on my list of the top-five SF novels of 2008.

    [Coda: I seldom blend creative discussions with my reviews, because my own novels are both unpublished and unpublishable, but I happened, in 2008, to write a novel that tackled many of the issues raised by Cowboy Angels using more or less the same starting premise.  As a result, I thought about that parallel universe/imperialism combo a great deal more than the average audience for this novel.  Reading Cowboy Angels, I was amused to see that we’d used some of the same devices and rationalizations to limit the scope of our multiverse.  I was even more pleased to note that we both went in different directions from the same premise, and that as a result I didn’t spend most of my time thinking “Aaargh, he’s doing it better than I did.”  It made the latter-book twists even more fun given that they sprang from more or less the same place.  Trust me; there’s no higher praise that praise coming from someone who worked on something similar.]