Reviews

  • The Martian Child, David Gerrold

    The Martian Child, David Gerrold

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 2002, 190 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-765-30311-6

    In Science Fiction writing workshops relying on the “Turkey City Lexicon”, there is a derogatory expression, “Abbess Phone Home”, to describe “any mainstream story with a gratuitous SF or fantasy element tacked on so it could be sold.” The expression is flippant, but the sad truth remains that genre writers can often found themselves trapped into their own literary ghetto when they try to break into a foreign market with a perfectly good non-genre story that could be published by their usual channels if only it had one or two genre elements.

    I won’t try to guess how David Gerrold came to write The Martian Child or how the genre elements found their way into what is otherwise a mainstream story, but there’s no denying that the Science Fiction elements of this novel are largely irrelevant to its greatest success: portraying with frank honesty the tough process of adopting a troubled child. The idea of a kid who may be an alien may be enough to get Gerrold’s faithful SF-reading audience to pick up the book, but it’s hardly what makes the novel so interesting. (One note without further comment that while Gerrold’s novelette that formed the kernel of the novel was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1994 and went on to win both a Hugo and a Nebula award, the film that was adapted from the novel kept none of the science-fictional elements and was marketed as straight-up drama.)

    Like many of Gerrold’s short stories, The Martian Child weaves fiction with fact, featuring first-person narration from a David whose biographical details (gay; Californian; SF writer) are very similar to David Gerrold’s own. SF fans will feel a little chill of name recognition as Daniel Keys Moran, Todd McCaffrey and Steve Barnes each make small cameo appearances in the narrative, alongside a mention of Theodore Sturgeon. If nothing else, even the cover says “based on a true story”.

    Because Gerrold did adopt a child nearly fifteen years ago, and there’s no doubt that the experience fueled this novel. As we read all about how a single man adopts a “hard to place” child, it’s the day-to-day frustrations and incidents of the adoption, more than the hints that the child has supernatural powers, that drive this novel forward. Never mind how the child may (or may not) be evidence of an alien invasion plot: it’s the temper tantrums, the petty theft, the threats of walking away from a budding father/son connection that are the real suspense elements in this novel. This isn’t a treatise on adoption, but it doesn’t sugar-coat the experience, and gives all of the right believable details.

    For such a short novel, it packs an emotional charge far more intense than you’d expect. Part of The Martian Child’s power is how it focuses on a narrative featuring two main characters and little else. It takes place in a contemporary reality, although it may not be immune to the occasional earthquakes and Hollywood movie props. Gerrold has always been a writer with an impeccably accessible style and it doesn’t fail him here: Every word in this short novel is there for a reason, and you may very well end up reading the entire thing in one sitting, as it is probably intended.

    Given all of this, it’s a bit strange that the deniable SF elements of the novel end up feeling like a bit of a genre-friendly side-show, or a way to distinguish the novel from other similar narratives. The real meaning of “Abbess Phone Home” stories aren’t always that they fail at being genre stories, but that most of their interest lies elsewhere. So it is that The Martian Child may attract readers looking for alien changeling, but hit them with the force of a story about real humans.

  • Twilight (2008)

    Twilight (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2008) It’s too easy to blast this film for lousy special effects, ridiculous pandering to its audience, gigantic plot holes and lousy direction. The truth is; this is not “a vampire movie” as much as it’s a film made specifically for teenage girls, sublimating pubescent anxieties into an overtly fantastical metaphor. Plus, it’s based on a wildly popular book that half the audience has already read: The director’s got her hands tied to insipid voice-over narration, slow-motion introduction of the romantic hero, and a plot that stops mid-way through. Fans will presumably be pleased, although the rest of the audience will just stare in amazement at the hollowness of the “Twilight phenomenon”. There are rare moments of sunshine in the middle of the morass: a conventionally amusing scene shows how dinnertime conventions are different between humans and vampires, while some particularly lousy lines will have anyone laughing at the ineptness of it all. (For those who aren’t fans, consider this: Imagine the dullness of Star Wars Episode 2‘s romantic subplot stretched over 90+ minutes.) Basically, it’s OK to love or hate this film, as long as you pre-identify as being part of its public or not.

  • Punisher: War Zone (2008)

    Punisher: War Zone (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2008) The only thing that distinguish this awful film from so many run-of-the-mill C-grade action movies is the unbelievably over-the-top violence that push its R-rating. Exploding heads; clouds of blood; pierced bodies: take your pick, gore-hound, because this film’s all about red pulp. For anyone without a fetish for violent dismemberment, however, this third attempt to create an action franchise out of one of the less likable comic-book superhero comes across as reprehensible. The violence doesn’t serve any artistic purpose and feels even more gratuitous than usual. Charmless, witless, meaningless: no wonder it’s going to be forgotten within moments.

  • Echo Burning, Lee Child

    Echo Burning, Lee Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Jove, 2001 (2005 reprint), 420 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-515-14382-9

    Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series have always been built around the idea of the knight errant: Reacher is an ex-Military Policeman, now roaming around the United States and picking up adventures along the way. He’s not much of a sensitive man, but he knows right from wrong and seldom hesitates to do what needs to be done. But no novel in the series has made the knight-errant connection so explicitly as the scorching Echo Burning.

    This time around, adventure finds Reacher on a Texas highway, as he’s picked up by a woman in need of protection. The story that she tells Reacher doesn’t quite convince him, but he can see that she’s got real problems: Her abusive husband is about to be released from prison after a few years locked away, and she fears what he may do to her upon his return. The husband isn’t just mean; he’s also rich, and has powerful friends. Reacher soon finds himself out of his usual elements when he’s stranded on a Texas ranch far from everywhere else, hired as a ranch hand despite knowing nothing about horses.

    One advantage of a roving character is that every novel can take place in a different environment, and so it is that Echo Burning is likely to be most vividly remembered for its depiction of summertime in deep rural Texas, a place that can kill a pedestrian within a single day with heat unfit for human survival, a place where you pretty much have to drive hours in order to get from one place to another. There’s nowhere to hide in the sun-baked plains, and the novel eventually acquires a feel not terribly dissimilar to a modern western.

    But, true to Reacher’s mission, it’s also about protecting a woman and her daughter against whatever dangers surround them. This being a Child novel, the nature of the danger isn’t always what we expect, and thank to the kind of plot reversal so characteristic of the Reacher series, the story takes a different direction midway through, just as readers are likely to ask if the novel can run a few more hundred pages on the initial premise. The woman’s husband isn’t the most dangerous thing around, oh no…

    Most of Child’s distinctive skill in writing a thriller are just as successful in this novel: His lean but elegant prose, his unusually credible accumulation of details, his assured skill at plotting and characterization do much to keep us interested even as we’re waiting for things to happen. Only the ending drags a bit too long; not for what it contains, but for the way it takes too long to settle what should have been resolved earlier. But by that point in the story, it’s too late to stop reading.

    In-between the country-trotting stories of Running Blind and Without Fail, Echo Burning marks a welcome change of pace for Reacher, who gets the chance to show his skills in a restricted setting, involved in a more intimate story than usual. Even the conspiracy that is suggested by the first few passages, as a team of assassins ply their trade, is a restrained affair. One of the strengths of the Reacher series is that every novel has its own set of distinctive features (which isn’t something to be said about other long-running series), and Echo Burning is easily one of Child’s most assured book so far. It is also one of Reacher’s purest quest, focused on helping the innocent and untainted by dubious personal connections to his past. If you haven’t hopped along the Jack Reacher series, it’s not too late to start, and Echo Burning is one of the better entry points into the character.

  • Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)

    Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2008) I wasn’t a big fan of the original, so the fact that this sequel seems a bit better than the original shouldn’t be interpreted as a particularly strong recommendation. For some reason, the characters are less annoying, the cloying sentimentality is toned-down and there are more penguins than in the original. There are at least one or two genuinely funny moments, from dirty union negotiations to a very determined shark. Otherwise, there’s not much to say: It still falls far below the best-of-category CGI films, but it’s marginally tolerable and that’s already not bad.

  • The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

    The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2008) Hollywood really should know better than to attempt remakes of decent films, because this latest snore-fest is the perfect example of why some things shouldn’t be revived. Cold War parables can’t always be adapted to modern sensibilities, and Hollywood now often seems dumber than ever: taken together, both of those truth hints at why this remake is so unbelievably dull. It’s most obvious with Keanu Reeves (who manages to portray alienness so successfully that he feels more robotic than the actual robot), but the script he’s got to work with is utter trash, with leaps of logic and incoherent plotting. While the film can’t avoid a few nice moments (the nano-cloud effects are good, and so are some of the early scenes of impending doom), it seems determined to annoy the maximum number of people with unsupportable performances by Kathy Bates and Jaden Smith. Again, see the script for the problems with their roles. Muddled morals, tepid pacing and superficial intellectual content are hallmarks of our era. The film ends up being a powerful argument for the extermination of our species. Recommendation for Hollywood: Don’t mess with what’s not broken, because you will make it worse.

  • Bolt (2008)

    Bolt (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2008) Thematic resemblances between Bolt and Pixar movies may not be accidental: With Pixar alumni John Lasseter producing the film, the themes and methods tend to the tried-and-true, what with an animal protagonist living a fantasy, going through a series of action set-pieces to reach an emotional objective. It’s conventional (the ending can be seen coming a mile away), but it works thanks to good characterization, effective direction and considerable artistry. This being said, the film’s never quite as enjoyable as when it’s taking place in fantasy-land: the opening action sequences is so good that the rest of the film pales in comparison. Bolt remains strangely limited in other areas as well. Beyond the thematic richness of a dog forced to confront his own ordinary dogness, there isn’t much here to justify a second viewing. Still, Bolt succeeds at most of what it attempts, including delivering a satisfying film to the whole family. That’s already not too bad considering that the computer-animated-film subgenre is getting crowded, and the level of quality is more uneven than ever.

  • Red Lightning, John Varley

    Red Lightning, John Varley

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2006, 330 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-441-01364-3

    Every decade has its own John Varley, who went from a ground-breaking newcomer in the seventies to a Hollywood exile in the eighties to a mysterious absent in the nineties to, now, a mid-list entertainer perfectly content to tell familiar stories in aw-shucks narration.

    Nominally a sequel to Red Thunder, this novel picks up a generation later. Mars has been colonized thanks to the bubble drive, and our narrator Ray is the son of the first volume’s Manny Garcia. As the novel begins, the Earth is struck by something, and the resulting tidal wave is enough to wipe out Florida where Ray’s grandmother still maintains the family hotel. Within hours the entire Garcia clan is on the move, headed for Earth, and then into dark devastated Florida in search of their relatives.

    But it’s one of Red Lightning‘s problems is that even though the Florida expedition takes up nearly half the book, it’s not really the story that Varley wants to tell. No, the real reason for this novel is an umpteenth tale of how extra-terrestrials stage another American Revolution in Spaaace. Never mind the disaster special in the novel’s first half: Soon, we’re back on Mars, fighting against mysterious Earth forces, and using bubbles to terrorize Earth so thoroughly that no one will even think of taking over the plucky Martian colonists.

    Yes, it’s all terribly familiar. Except that instead of political sophistication, Varley has magical bubble technology on his side. The solution to pretty much every problem in the book is “more bubbles!” It gets old fast, even when Varley gets all aw-shucks-y with us.

    Fortunately, it’s the same narration that keeps the novel from being just another forgettable mid-list SF novel. Even when he’s seriously misguided, Varley’s narration is compelling on a sentence-by-sentence basis. It’s a combination of engaging storytelling, an accumulation of clever detail and a voice that doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s hard to dislike someone like that, even when they’re telling hackneyed stories that appeal to few others than libertarians looking for another hit of that extraterrestrial revolution. (They’re probably the same people who won’t mind the convenient appearance of mysterious extra-governmental forces terrorizing Mars.)

    Given the colonial rebellion that takes up most of the book’s last half, it’s ironic that it’s the low-tech dirty trip through Floridian devastation that ends up being Red Lightning‘s set-piece. But even then, the quality of the segment can be difficult to reconcile with the science-fictional setting. What would have been perfectly mesmerizing in a contemporary setting becomes impossible to justify a few decades from now. Take, for instance, the way Florida is left to fend for itself under media blackout after a tidal wave. Yes, Varley has been informed by the events following the Katrina hurricane, but there’s something too pat about the lack of foreign sources of information and ad-hoc communication networks. (Also: not every future government will be as willfully incompetent as the Bush administration.)

    The result feels disjointed, a double feature of stories that don’t go well together, jammed into a structure that can’t accommodate both a destroyed Florida and a rebellious Mars. The easy prose may make Red Lightning a fast and pleasant read, but it does nothing to patch the broken shape of the book, or the more problematic elements of its conception. Varley, of course, has been a genre Science Fiction writer all of his life. But this is one instance where stepping back from the future and writing a contemporary thriller would have been a better choice. In trying to stick to genre formulas, Varley is well on his way to diluting his own brand.

  • Futures from Nature, Ed. Henry Gee

    Futures from Nature, Ed. Henry Gee

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2007, 320 pages, C$28.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-7653-1805-3

    The way you eat a bowl of candy may be the best way to predict how you’re going to like this anthology. Because this isn’t your usual short-story collection, and there’s a better way to approach it than to read it straight up.

    Those in the know will remember that in 1999-2000, and then again in 2005-2006 (and again once more starting in 2007 in Nature Physics), the prestigious scientific journal Nature commissioned short stories from leading scientists and Science Fiction authors. Very short short stories, none of them exceeding 1,500 words, or roughly four pages of text. Despite a few reprints in year’s best anthologies, most of those stories remained in the pages of Nature. Now the first hundred of those stories have been put together in book form, with the happy consequence that this is the genre’s first short-short-story anthology in a long time.

    Thanks to the commissioning process, the table of content of this anthology is stellar, featuring many legends of Science Fiction (Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Moorcock, Frederick Pohl) and modern masters (Vernor Vinge, David Brin, Bruce Sterling) alongside hot established writers (Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Kim Stanley Robinson) and relative newcomers (Brenda Cooper, David Marusek, Tobias Buckell). With a hundred stories on the menu, the list of authors reads like a the best-ever Readercon guest list, or a who’s who of SF: Any anthology that lists Warren Ellis next to Greg Egan, David Langford, Nalo Hopkinson, Scott Westerfeld and Dan Simmons (among many, many others) has got to have something for everyone. Even less-familiar names have stories worth reading, Nature having published fiction from real working scientists.

    Naturally, the price to pay for a hundred stories in 320 pages is that they’re very short. Never mind plotting or characters: Futures from Nature is all about ideas and notions, sometimes tipping over to jokes or conceptual pieces. Some authors do better than others in short form, but the size limits remain constraining. On the other hand, more impatient readers (or those who read for ideas) will be happy with quick reads that reward what they’re looking for in SF stories.

    Such a collection won’t be to the liking of everyone: Going back to the bowl-of-candy analogy, it’s easy and detrimental to read too many of those stories at once. Too much ideas sugar, not enough literary roughage: instant overdose. Instead, keep the book as bathroom reading or near the TV during commercial breaks. (This reviewer essentially finished the book by reading stories during video game loading screens.)

    The other annoying thing about Future of Nature is that the stories are strictly arranged in alphabetical order of their author’s family name. It’s all the way from Aldiss to Ziemelis without a break. While a thematic arrangement may have been overkill, a better organization may have been to present the stories in order of publication, or at least within two separate sections according to the “run” in which they were commissioned. Word-count requirements were notably looser during the first run of the series, leading to a number of perceptibly longer stories: it would have been nice to seen those stories in a separate section. (More seriously, there are no bibliographical references for the stories, or any ways to track them down to their original date of publications.)

    It may also be the case that Futures from Nature may be a better choice than most in introducing SF to non-SF readers, especially those who have a science background. While the jargon flies thick and the size constraints keep the exposition down to a minimum, there is a variety in themes yet a similarity in accessibility in Futures from Nature that make it a very different beast than most of the other short story collections you’ll find on the shelves. A collection of short-short stories doesn’t look like it demands a lot of your time. Much like a bowl of candy, it’s easy to finish it before even knowing it.

  • Rhetorics of Fantasy, Farah Mendlesohn

    Rhetorics of Fantasy, Farah Mendlesohn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Wesleyan, 2008, 306 pages, C$33.95 tpb, ISBN 0-8195-6868-6

    One of the best things about being a Science Fiction and Fantasy genre reviewer at this point in history is the knowledge that, in many ways, the field is still young. The critical discourse about genre is still evolving, and new approaches to the field are being developed. Book like Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy only underscore how much fun it is to read this stuff seriously, and how crazy the genre critics are willing to be.

    Because, frankly, you have to be a bit insane to attempt what Mendlesohn tries to do here: Propose not only a framework in which to classify genre fantasy, but also study the ways in which fantasy literature articulates its own nature. Working both at the macro and the micro level of criticism, Rhetorics of Fantasy is a humble sketch of yet another Grand Unified Theory of Fantasy. The enthusiasm with which it was received (I saw it sell out at two separate literary conventions I attended) says as much about Mendlesohn’s impeccable credentials than about the field’s willingness to consider new ideas.

    The innovation that most readers will keep from Rhetorics of Fantasy is Mendlesohn’s descriptive classification of fantasy literature in four big categories: Portal-Quest, Immersive, Intrusion and Liminal. The first three are easy to explain: If a character goes elsewhere strange to have adventures, it’s Portal-Quest. If adventures take place in a self-contained fantasy-land, it’s Immersive. If fantasy comes to the real world for adventures, it’s Intrusion. As for the rarer Liminal Fantasy, well, it’s fantasy in which the fantastic may itself be a fantasy. This is a gross oversimplification, of course, which is why the book has not four but five chapters. The fifth one (which is “not elective”, specifies the author on P.246) presents works that don’t fit in the established pattern and may, in fact, break Mendlesohn’s classification.

    This too reflects how much fun the SF&F critical field can be. Unlike other academicians, Mendlesohn invites criticism and counter-arguments. Rhetorics of Fantasy is meant to be a toolbox of new critical tools, not a definitive set of conclusions to put the genre in its place. Readers are invited to take and keep what works and improve the rest.

    But even allowing for dissent regarding genre sub-classification, there’s much more to the book than five bins in which we can dump the fantasy section of your local bookstore. The categories are consequences of rhetorical strategies, explains Mendlesohn in working her way up from straight prose. In classifying Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as Portal-Quest rather than Immersive fantasy, she offers a crucial clue: Tolkien’s rhetorical strategies are about discovering the world, not inhabiting it like we do in, say, China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. (His The Scar is another thing entirely, and Mendlesohn’s insighful analysis of it made me want to re-read it all over again.) Much of Rhetorics of Fantasy is thus concerned about the way words are put together by fantasy writers, and the inevitable consequences those choices have on how the novel is articulated. I’m sure that writer’s workshop organizers will be able to consider Mendlesohn’s analysis as inhabiting the liminal zone between critical analysis and high-level recommendations on how to write fantasy. (An inevitable conclusion to Mendlesohn’s arguments are that it’s possible to write fantasy by using the wrong rhetoric, something that ought to inform a number of writers in the future.)

    But another good way to read the book is just to be swept along the critical bon mots and delight in the insights that seem to drip off every page or so. Ultimately, I don’t feel qualified to do anything else but grin at Mendlesohn’s easy familiarity with genre literature and nod along. Most of what she says appear to be true, no matter which type of fantasy (French or English, Old or Modern, Heroic or Gritty) I try applying it to. Some of the tools I’ll be using in reading critically; others seem too cumbersome for my own purposes. (Liminal Fantasy, as you may have guessed, may be a concept too abstruse for a reviewer who’s got trouble keeping his diacritics away from his dialectics.) I’m already field-stripping Mendlesohn’s toolbox, hefting the best hammers and grips, looking at genre literature like a series of nails to be hammered and things to be squeezed together. The rest of the tools can stay in the toolbox: I’ll be back to them once I have more problems that the hammers and grips won’t be able to solve.

    And that too, is part of the fun of reviewing SF&F. Books like Rhetorics of Fantasy, written by a genius to be read by morons, will always be there to revisit, growing alongside their readers as needs be.

    [February 2009: As I keep mulling over this book, it strikes me that it would be interesting to hash around the ideas of Rhetorics of Fantasy and see whether this prose-based analysis can be adapted to other mediums such as film or comic books. When stories such as Pan’s Labyrinth seem to span all four of Mendlesohn’s categories, is it possible to deconstruct film grammar so that we’re left with the strategies used by directors to create estrangement, make us feel intrusion, allow for a degree of liminal doubt or rationalize immersion? Is it possible to apply Mendlesohn’s fantastic rhetorics to all of storytelling, rather than prose fiction?]

  • Area 7, Matthew Reilly

    Area 7, Matthew Reilly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 2001 (2003 reprint), 490 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-312-98322-0

    If ever Matthew Reilly’s publishers are scouring the web for snappy blurbs, here’s the best I can do: “Matthew Reilly is the mad man of thrillers.”

    It’s even true.

    Because other writers write thrillers as if they’ve got constraints to respect. Budgets. Logic. Physics. Reilly, on the other hand, thinks that none of those things should stand in the way of a kick-ass thriller. And seeing how much fun his novels are to read, it’s hard to disagree with him.

    Area 7 alone, for instance, has a massive underground complex filled with government secrets, advanced airplanes, traitorous special forces, serial killers and Kodiak bears. That’s beautiful, and I haven’t even told you anything yet about a President of the United States whose heart is wired to an explosive charge, and the special game that pits the President’s secret service against a renegade bunch of racist military personnel. Do I really need to? This is a novel in which, for goodness’ sake, the protagonist escape to orbit midway through the story, and them come back down for more explosive action.

    If you have already read some of Reilly’s other thrillers, you will find yourself at home: It’s got the same scope of imagination, the same madcap pacing, the same rush through mysteries and revelations. Any other writer feels like a poky geezer after Reilly’s thrill-a-chapter experience.

    The similitudes to his other novels will be obvious. Not only does Area 7 feature protagonist Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield (who also starred in Ice Station), it also takes place in a generally confined environment like the eponymous Ice Station or the library of Contest. Like most Reilly novels so far, it features a lone hero acting alongside crack teams of opposing forces, plays along with high-tech weaponry and seems aimed more at jaded action movie fans than traditional thriller readers.

    By the time our hero blasts off into orbit to duel with astronauts defecting to China and control a satellite that relays instructions to the President’s bobby-trapped pacemaker, (or something like that) it’s far too ridiculous to be taken seriously: even when it works, it works on a different level, one that takes place on the meta-fictional plane where author and reader are trying to one-up each other in a complex game of self-aware genre protocol redefinition.

    Or maybe it’s just explosive slam-bang action throughout. At some point it’s exhausting to pick where earnestness stops and parody begins. Suffice to say that if Area 7 has a flaw, it’s the same one as Reilly’s other thrillers: By pummeling readers with non-stop action and ever-crazier developments, it runs the risk of exhausting its audience. Ironically, it’s page-a-minute speed freaks rather than slower, infrequent readers that may have bigger problems reading the book: Unlike other writers who pad their narrative with description and character moments that can be skipped on the way to the next plot point, Reilly dispenses with those uneventful stretches and so trips up readers who have made a habit out of skimming. He only gets detailed when writing an action sequence in which all the small details have to be aligned. Otherwise, it’s gunshots and explosions all the time.

    It goes without saying that Reilly’s writing for a specific audience, and that this audience is considerably smaller than the total book-toting public. But his formula has become sheer performance art, and I can’t wait until I can read his next novel.

  • Defining Diana, Hayden Trenholm

    Defining Diana, Hayden Trenholm

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bundoran Press, 2008, 285 pages, C$19.95 tpb, ISBN 978-0-9782052-0-1

    Some novels are tougher to review than others, and as far as I’m concerned, Defining Diana is right up there along with the toughest. Understand that I want to say something nice about the novel: I bought it, autographed, straight from the hands of the author. I want Hayden Trenholm to succeed at what he does, as much as I want to read great Science Fiction. As if that wasn’t enough, Defining Diana is also a publication from a Canadian small-press publisher that specializes in genre literature, and criticizing Canadian small-presses feels just as bad as kicking puppies. (I’m not saying on what authority I can make this comparison.)

    But if I had read this novel in normal circumstances, bought in bookstores from an unknown author and just any other publisher, this review wouldn’t exist. I would have read the book, shrugged and gone on to something else. The problem with Defining Diana is that it’s a generic novel that struggles for distinction in a market that churns out hundreds of other SF novels per year. What actually makes the novel special for me (its Canadian-ness, its place in the bibliography of someone I know) may not actually do anything for you.

    Even the plot summary seems to court generic ennui. In 2043 Calgary, a woman named Diana is found dead in a locked apartment, and the lacks of DNA clues don’t add up for the detectives on the scene. Faster than you can say “locked-room mystery”, Calgary Police’s Special Detection Unit is on the case. But Calgary’s a big city, other things are happening, and SDU members seem to have been selected more for their neuroses than their special detection skills…

    If defining Diana is the novel’s first pressing question, it’s soon submerged under a number of subplots. Some of them are related and other aren’t, but it all adds to a portrait of Calgary a few decades in the future. While the background elements of the future seem taken from generic mildly-dystopian SF elements (environmental degradation, pervasive corporatism, ever-present terrorism, rising fundamentalism, etc.), the concept of setting this story in Calgary bring a certain freshness to the book: Despite being Canada’s third most important SF metropolis, Calgary has yet to be mined for inspiration in the same way Toronto or Montréal have been. If nothing else, it makes Defining Diana one of the purest Canadian Science Fiction novel of the past few years, and that’s nothing to dismiss easily.

    But the problem with this novel’s multiplicity of subplots, and their conventional nature drawing equally from police procedurals and Science Fiction, is that it’s hard to avoid a certain boredom. What didn’t help were a number of deliberate writing techniques: a number of infodumps between characters who should know better; on-the-nose dialogue; and a succession of pop-culture references that feel old even by today’s standards, let alone those of 2043. All of those can be explained by a desire to make the novel more accessible to older non-genre readers. (The same writing tics often pop up in Robert J. Sawer’s fiction) But they often feel graceless, forced and useless: Few things are as exasperating as reading a few lines of dialogue and think “there’s probably a joke in there for those who watched the CBC in the seventies.” Not everyone is as jaded as I am, sure, but all of the above made reading the novel more of a chore than I expected.

    While I’m discussing small deliberate annoyances, I might as well get to the small-press-and-puppies-kicking part: Bundoran Press may want to spend just a bit more time working on the packaging of their next novels. Defining Diana‘s uninspired book design isn’t a problem, but the copy-editing has let a few amusing mistakes through (I’m still wondering what a “boarder patrol” [P.44] actually does.) and the garish cover looks as if it’s been put together from free clip-art sources. Just try to explain that SF is a respectable literature to anyone who catches you reading this.

    But now that I’m done venting, here comes the good part: As mentioned above, I don’t think there’s been a purest Canadian Science Fiction novel recently. For all of its faults, Defining Diana does something that I always find admirable, which is to define a future from modern Canadian principles. It’s urban, it’s multicultural, it’s energetic and it generally espouses good middle-of-the-road Canadian values by showing what happens if you push too far in the other direction. I’ve mentioned that Calgary seldom earns any extrapolative love from the Canadian SF community, but Canada often gets short-changed by its own authors. It’s about time that Canadian SF writers start thinking about futures set at home, even if it’s as background for deeper character stories. Defining Diana does that, and thus easily earns a place on my Aurora Awards ballot for 2008. For those who don’t care about awards, consider this: I expect that the ideal audience for this book, which is to say readers who like SF police mysteries but haven’t overdosed on them, will like the book a lot more than I did.

    And you know what? I will gladly pay cash for Trenholm’s next novel.

    (But we’ll see then whether he agrees to dedicate it to me.)

  • Running Blind, Lee Child

    Running Blind, Lee Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Jove, 2000 (2005 reprint), 498 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-515-14350-8

    Every series has a weaker volume, and so I think I just found Lee Child’s worst novel in the six I’ve read so far. Not a bad batting average, especially considering how readable Running Blind remains despite a really silly conclusion.

    It’s even more remarkable considering how consistently good the Jack Reacher series has been until now, blending tough-guy narration with credible procedural details and genre-aware plot twists. It’s a telling detail that despite many far-fetched premises, the Reacher series has remained generally credible until now, where a twist too far makes the whole novel crumble on its foundations.

    But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, nor spoil the novel ahead of its time.

    Running Blind starts like many Jack Reacher novels do, with something unrelated. This time, Reacher is in New York City, enjoying an out-of-the-way restaurant while mulling over his relationship carried over from Tripwire. It’s an unusual beginning given how the rest of the series seems content to ignore previous adventures. It’s also a signal that this volume’s Reacher will be considerably more introspective than in the others. But don’t worry, because you get bone-crushing action before the end of the sixth page, as Reacher smacks down a few hoodlums intent on explaining a protection racket to a new restaurant owner. Unlike most incidents of Reacher generosity, this one has consequences leading to Reacher’s apprehension. But he’s not charged with what he expects: it turns out that around the country, women with a past link to Reacher are being murdered by what appears to be a serial killer, and Reacher fits the psychological profile of such a killer almost perfectly.

    Will Reacher be forced to clear his name? Not really, because his explanation of why psychological profile is nonsense is quickly followed by another murder for which he’s got an official alibi. Reluctantly brought inside the investigation to help, it’s obvious that he doesn’t have many friends in uniform: his presence is barely tolerated, and his solid instincts as an investigator are the only thing making him useful to the authorities.

    But this wouldn’t be a Reacher novel without at least one dramatic twist at some point during the narrative, and the one in Running Blind comes later than most as Reacher suspects that there’s no serial killer at work.

    Alas, the novel jumps off the rails soon afterward, as (SPOILER) the only way Child can bring his various impossibilities together is by asking readers to believe in a mastermind able to hypnotize a dozen people well enough to make them act upon specific instructions weeks after the hypnosis session, and collaborate willingly in their own death. And also ignore a cumbersome delivery sitting in their garage during this whole time.

    I mean: come on. That kind of cheap plotting trick may have been cute in dime novels, but it’s not because the Jack Reacher novels are the best modern equivalent to men’s pulp thrillers that Child can get away with that this time around. Never mind the moody Reacher (who gets a stay of relationship when his past paramour flees to England, resetting the continuity in time for the next novel): that dumb hypnosis plot contrivance is the one thing that separates Running Blind from the rest of its better Child brethren. It’s a shame, really, because the rest of the novel is vintage Child, with the tough prose, page-flipping rhythm and well-painted characters.

    But everyone gets a day off once in a while, and Running Blind is the weak spot so far in the Reacher series. One of the only advantages of reading the series straight through (as part of my Lee Child Reading Project) after discovering it in a late installment is the reassuring knowledge that it’s an unusual lousy episode, and that the rest of the series goes back to normal.

  • Body of Lies, David Ignatius

    Body of Lies, David Ignatius

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Norton, 2007 (2008 reprint), 360 pages, C$15.50 tpb, ISBN 978-0-393-33429-6

    The years since the cold war haven’t been kind to espionage thrillers. After the fall of the USSR, writers had a tough time finding a credible replacement for the all-powerful Soviet Empire. Trying to spy on drug cartels, North Koreans or secretive corporations sometimes worked, but often didn’t carry the same charge. But as Body of Lies demonstrates, spying is still a capable thrill generator, as long as you understand the nature of twenty-first-century intelligence operations.

    While many contemporary thrillers have taken refuge in fantasy world made of politically partisan axioms, reporter David Ignatius’ Body of Lies heads into the other direction, taking a hard look at America’s increasingly precarious place in the world. The novel begins in post-invasion Iraq, as American intelligence services are looking for ways to infiltrate terrorist networks. But their intentions aren’t matched by their power on the ground, and it’s up to agent Roger Ferris to suffer the consequences of stateside callousness when his ground operation blows up in his face. Transferred to Jordan while his marriage crumbles, Ferris finds himself stuck between his cynically slimy boss and the head of the Jordanian intelligence service. While Europe has to deal with an unprecedented campaign of suicide bombers, Ferris hits upon a plan to infiltrate a terrorist network… thanks to a dead body.

    But if there’s a recurring idea in this book, it’s that for all of their money, intentions and high tech equipment, Americans are disadvantaged when it comes to ground operations in the Middle East. Trying to run spies in foreign countries can be a difficult dance with local authorities, while terrorist networks find strength in their tech-savvy lack of central organization. In this context, Ferris is a young man with an old-school mentality, as he disdains the quick crutch of signal intelligence in favor of human assets cultivated over sustained relationships.

    Perhaps Body of Lies‘ finest achievement is in re-casting well-worn spy thriller concepts in a way that seems perfectly attuned to the current zeitgeist. Its portrayal of modern intelligence operations is credible, even as it self-avowedly riffs off a World War 2 operation as its central conceit. (Fans of Ewen Montagu’s The Man Who Never Was will be pleased.) At the same time, Body of Lies tackles several of the standby themes of espionage fiction: the twisted relationships, the power trade-offs, the lack of trust, the tension between signal and human sources, the hierarchal tensions between field operators and headquarter managers, and so on. For those who haven’t read a good spy thriller in a while, Body of Lies is a great way to get back in the genre: it’s got vivid characters, mesmerizing procedural details and crisp writing. Best of all, it’s got no visible political ax to grind beyond an acquiescence that America often makes mistakes.

    Fans of the Ridley Scott movie adaptation will be pleased to see that the film stays surprisingly true to most of the book despite the removal of one major female character and the titular body of lies. But there’s a really fascinating extra plot twist near the end of the story that wasn’t carried over the the film, a pernicious little extension of the story’s theme that becomes a bonus for those tempted by the book.

    Body of Lies is all the more remarkable in that it’s a perfectly entertaining beach read that also doubles as a solid world-aware thriller with more on its mind than just gunfights and jeep chases. It’s American without being America-centric, and modern without abandoning the lessons of the past. It’s a welcome tonic for the spying thriller, and a satisfying read for anyone who’s paid attention to the headline news over the past few years.

  • Transporter 3 (2008)

    Transporter 3 (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2008) The first film was dumb, the sequel was dumber and this one is the dumbest. But the worst sin of writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen is to saddle returning protagonist Frank Martin with one of the most unlikable love interest in recent memory. Sullen moody marble-mouthed raccoon-faced “Valentina” somehow manages to seduce Martin, but viewers may be forgiven for wondering how much more fun the film would have been with a real sullen moody marble-mouth raccoon in the passenger’s seat. Transporter 3 never recovers from that mistake, and even the chases and gunfights of the film all seem lame given the lack of empathy regarding Martin’s charge. Only Jason Statham does well and saves his honor throughout the film; the rest is eminently forgettable. After a bad second installment, let’s just hope that this franchise is now out of its misery.