The Cats of Tanglewood Forest

Some books I enjoy from an intellectual perspective. I can see the skill involved in the storytelling, and appreciate it. Other books I just sink into, too caught up in the tale to deconstruct why it is so good. The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (an expansion of an earlier children’s book, A Circle of Cats, which I adored) is the second type of book. I devoured this in a single day, and will definitely be reading it again to figure out why it works so well from a technical perspective. Let me give you here my first impressions.

The first thing you will notice about this book is that it is gorgeous. A full color slip cover with Charles Vess’s inimitable illustrations can be removed to see that the hardcover itself is gorgeously illustrated. The endpapers are illustrated as well, and the entire book is graced with enchanting, full-color, beautiful pen and ink drawings that evoke the rural Appalachian setting and Depression-era time period with mastery. The paper is thick and heavy and delightful to the touch. This is a book that delights almost all of the senses (I did not actually lick it) before you even get to the words.

And then you start reading and are swept away into a new folktale that feels as ancient as the world. Lillian is a young woman, probably eleven or twelve, who lives with her aunt on a farm deep in the piney-spruce forest. Prone to wandering the hills and forests behind her house, she is bitten by a snake on one of her journeys and dies. Almost. The wild cats see her dying and decide to intervene because she always leaves a saucer of milk out for them when she milks the cow. They turn her into a kitten. And this is where the story really gets interesting.

Like many of the old country folk tales, this one is rife with messages. Be careful what you wish for. Be nice to strangers. Actions have consequences. People can’t always be trusted. Be honest. But like in the old morality tales, these aren’t hammered over the readers’ heads, instead woven in with a dash of humor and wisdom. What you really have is an enchanting tale of a young woman trying to do right by who she is, and by the people she loves. It’s a coming of age story that makes Lillian realize that other people are affected by her decisions, often in ways she can’t foresee, and that if she wants to be a good person, she has to take responsibility for her actions.

The gorgeously realized setting, brought to life in both art and prose, is a major character in this story. The creeks, forests, and glens of the piney-spruce are omnipresent, and provide guidance, both literal and figurative. The setting is fleshed out by bear people, The Father of Cats, an Apple Tree Man, and other enchanted and enchanting figures. The freedom with which this young girl runs wild through the wilderness makes the setting seem almost foreign to anyone who is raising children today, which adds another layer of the fantastical to this beautiful story.

While intended for middle-grade audiences, this is a book that will be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys folktales. While Charles de Lint is often credited as one of the pioneers of urban fantasy, I find his rural fantasy stories to be equally, if not more original than those in an urban setting. People have called him an author of mythic fiction as well, in an attempt to distinguish his brand of injecting the folktales of the First Nations and Native Americans into modern settings from the kickbutt female heroine and her vampire lover brand of urban fantasy that seems to crowd the shelves. Whatever you want to call what he is doing, it is beautiful and heartwarming and deserves to be treasured. This book is going on my shortlist for best book of 2013 and I would recommend it to all readers, especially those who have children. This is worth buying in hardback, which is probably the ultimate compliment.

Paths Not Taken

Warning: Contains spoilers for previous NIGHTSIDE books. If you haven’t read them, please start at the beginning with Something from the Nightside. Otherwise you’ll be lost.

Paths Not Taken is the fifth book in Simon R. Green’s NIGHTSIDE series. In the previous installment, Hex and the City, John Taylor investigated the origins of the Nightside and discovered that Lilith, his own mother, was its creator. Now, in Paths Not Taken, John and Suzie Shooter travel back in time to discover why and how Lilith created the Nightside. That might help them figure out why she now wants to destroy it and how they might be able to stop her.

The best part of Paths Not Taken, as usual, is the setting. This time it’s fun to learn what the Nightside was like throughout history, not just by being told, but by actually going back to experience it. (If you thought the modern Nightside was bad, you should have seen it in the 6^th century!) As we go backward in time, the past mixes up with the possible futures John has already seen in a previous book (thus the title Paths Not Taken) and we see how John has been unwittingly influencing events all along. We get to visit some familiar people and places and we learn what happened to Merlin’s heart, where the Lamentation came from, and how Suzie becomes disfigured in the future John has been worrying about. Green purposely creates all sorts of time paradoxes which will make your head spin. I’m just starting to realize how well he planned out the NIGHTSIDE series.

Paths Not Taken suffers from the same problems this series has had from the beginning, mainly the repetition of ideas and language within and between books. Green repeats himself so often that I wonder if he has certain phrases typed into a macro. For example, “… I opened up my inner eye, my private eye … and it was the easiest thing in the world to….”, “… they all remembered they had urgent appointments somewhere else.”) This was a real problem for me, so I’ve decided to take a break from NIGHTSIDE before revisiting it in the next book, Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth.

I’m listening to the fabulous audio production narrated by Marc Vietor. I wouldn’t think of reading NIGHTSIDE any other way.

Olympus

I am starting to be very impressed with this writer whose books I’ve just started reading. Nathan Edmondson caught my eye first with Who Is Jake Ellis?, for which I wrote a positive review earlier this year. But today — May 15th, 2013, the day I’m writing this review — marks the release of a 50+ page first issue of a new limited series: Dream Merchant. I read it today and was absolutely blown away by both the writing and the art. It’s a six-issue story, so I should be writing a review of it before the end of the year. That issue made me want to pick up his earlier four-issue graphic novel* Olympus. I’m glad I did. I just finished reading it in one sitting, and I’m sure I’ll be rereading it again soon. It is so very different from Who Is Jake Ellis? and the follow-up Where Is Jake Ellis? that I’m starting to think this guy can work in any genre. I’ll be getting back to you on that since I’ve got a few other comics by him stacking up on my physical and virtual bookshelves, including an Iron Man title. While Who Is Jake Ellis? is a thriller of sorts, with a man on the run and lots of guns and technology that raises questions worthy of Philip K. Dick in Bladerunner, Olympus is a grand tale on the mythic level about two mortal brothers who can never die.

Yes, you read that correctly: Castor and Pollux are immortal mortals. Thus their function is crucial to the realms of both. Since they initially were born mortal, they walk among us, drinking our beer and romancing our women, but since they were granted immortality by Zeus 3,000 years before our time, they represent the will of the Gods. After they die by their own hands at midnight every New Year’s Eve, they are reborn every year as servants of Zeus who do the works of the Gods in a world that no longer believes in their existence.

The book starts out with an excellent explanatory essay by Edmondson. I greatly appreciate his taking the time to give some background for and his thinking behind this great work. The comic book would be fine without it, but I think the essay, if seen as part of the story itself, helps the reader see the vast mythic canvas upon which Edmonson and Ward are working. Perhaps he could have conveyed this information in the comic book itself, but with four issues, I don’t see how he would have been able to convey the scope of his project without losing his focus on the two brothers. Pushed into a four-issue story, that much information would have felt like an essay anyway. Better to just give it beforehand. The information is interesting in that it presents a particular perspective on myth and how and why our relationship with the gods has shifted. Reading this essay also reveals that Edmondson’s strength as a writer is his versatility — he is not solely a creative writer.

As good as the essay is, I don’t mean to suggest that the comic completely relies upon it for the sense of the mythic. That mythic sense is conveyed in a variety of ways in the comic itself, the first of which is the art. I can’t imagine anyone picking up this comic and not immediately commenting on Christian Ward’s unique artwork. The world portrayed in the comic book often looks nothing like the world we inhabit. One gets the sense that Ward is helping us see our world through the eyes of the two brothers: We see the mythic penetrating through the mundane in every panel, both in the way the lines are often difficult to follow and through the magnificent colors from a palate apparently discovered for the purpose of creating this unique comic. This work of art is simply beautiful.

The mythic sense of the comic is also conveyed by the elements seemingly added beyond that of the main storyline. But, when one steps back, the entire plot comes together in ways that are not clear until the end. For example, the first issue shows the brothers on what we are led to believe is typical of a routine yearly mission. We see them fulfilling their roles as they become the will of Zeus still active on Earth, if one had eyes to see, the eyes given us by Edmondson and Ward. This little story takes up the whole of the first issue and introduces in the final pages the next character whom the brothers will face next. However, the first job completed in issue #1 will have significance to the story in the final issue, revealing Edmondson’s ability to construct a tight plot without it feeling contrived. Issue #2 takes us 3,000 years into the past for a quick event that once again lets us see the brothers operating on a grand stage, in this case across time, eternally young, eternally strong, eternally daring.

These two brothers, finally, are what make this story work. Having a mythic tale focused on two key characters gives the reader something to focus on, something very tangible and recognizable so one doesn’t become lost in the larger myths being discussed or alluded to. These two brothers provide the anchor to the comic. If anything marks a similarity between the otherwise very different titles of Olympus and Who Is Jake Ellis?, it’s the banter back-and-forth between two men always together, helping each other out through thick and thin, with vastly different personalities. In Who Is Jake Ellis?, it’s between Jon and Jake Ellis. Jon is the only one who can see Jake, which leads the reader to question whether Jon is talking to himself or not. But even if he is, he maintains two very distinct personalities, and he has very entertaining conversations with himself. In Olympus, we have a younger and older brother, and Edmondson makes clear the differences between the two and maintains those differences clearly throughout the comic. Those differences do affect the larger story, but they also make for some entertaining smaller scenes as well that give the story its humanity.

There is a larger story, a plot that pulls everything together, but I won’t discuss that here. I like to dance around the plot of a story in my reviews so as to not give away any spoilers, and I hope I have succeeded in conveying as much as I can get away with while giving away as little as possible! The main plot of the story requires the brothers to complete a serious task, and the stakes are high. Some characters — including some Gods — you will recognize as they make their way onto the stage of the comic, and in the end, as in all stories involving myth, all will be right again: Or will it? You’ll have to read Olympus to find out.

This book is almost perfect at fulfilling its purposes in a mere four issues. Perhaps my only complaint is that in some panels I have trouble figuring out what is happening no matter how much time I spend looking. A little ambiguity in the artwork is excellent for conveying that mythic sense I discussed above, but too much ambiguity just leaves me feeling confused a little more than seems good for the story. Based on the way this ambiguity decreases as the comic moves from issue to issue, I’m guessing that the artist worked to change that aspect of his style, perhaps for the very reasons I’m articulating. I can only guess. However, I think the risk the artist took in using such a style was well worth a few ambiguous, or less-than-perfect, panels. Why? Because of the artistic risk — when everything works and the colors combine with the style in just right manner — the effect is truly sublime, on the level of the artwork in Daytripper or some of the best art in Sandman.

Once again, it’s a pleasure for me to discover the work of Nathan Edmondson, just like it always is for a reader to discover a “new” author, or at least an author that is new to the reader. I’ll be keeping an eye out for his future work at the same time as I read his work that’s already out there. And I’ll be reporting back on those comics here at fanlit. Stay tuned. In the mean time, read the excellent Olympus.
*Graphic Novel: I think it’s useful to note the difference between a trade collection of an ongoing series, even if the trade collects a clear story arc, and a graphic novel that, like a prose novel, has a clear beginning and end as well as being a thematically unified whole. I use the term comic book as a broad umbrella term to cover trades, graphic novels, monthly issues, anthologies, etc.

Life After Life 

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

What is it that drives us to pick up and complete a novel? A plot that carefully mortars brick upon brick, each clicking neatly together giving us no choice but to wonder “but then what?” until we look up surprised to find ourselves at the end? A character so intriguing we feel compelled to follow along wherever their thoughts and actions lead us? The range and depth of emotions that buffet us as we’re swept along? Any one or two or all of these?

What in the world, then, is Kate Atkinson thinking in her newest work, Life After Life? In giving us Ursula Todd, who struts not just one life on the stage but dozens of them, each time being ushered off in a fall of darkness only to appear onstage again in the next scene, none the worse for wear, Atkinson seems to breaking nearly every contract between author and reader.

You want to care about this character? Too bad, she’s gone a few dozen lines in from the start:

No breath. All the world come down to this. One breath. Little lungs, like dragonfly wings failing to inflate . . . “Oh, ma’am” Bridget cried suddenly, “She’s all blue, so she is.”

You want to feel sad about this poor baby’s death? Or the grieving mother? Don’t, because a page later none of it happened:

“A girl, Doctor Fellowes? May I see her?”

“Yes, Mrs. Todd, a bonny, bouncing, baby girl… She would have died from the cord around her neck. I arrived at Fox Corner in the nick of time.”

You want to see what happens after the little girl down the lane is murdered, after Ursula is raped, after Ursula marries a wife-beater, after she shoots Hitler? I’ll tell you what happens: the little girl down the lane isn’t murdered, there is no rape, Ursula never marries, she doesn’t shoot Hitler. Spoiler alert. Oh wait, you can’t spoil a book with more than a dozen different “endings.”

And so it goes for five hundred pages, with Ursula’s lives ranging from a half-a-page in length to more than a hundred, each of them interrupted at some point by the “fall of darkness.” But it’s not “Game Over;” it’s “Resume Game.” And so the character dusts herself off, climbs on stage once again, and keeps moving forward, sometimes from that same fatal moment, sometimes leaping years back in time to begin moving toward it all over again. And some times, if she’s lucky, she gets the occasional moment of déjà vu that lets her evade some of the rougher moments in her past lives, dodging the bullet she only half-senses is wending her way.

This is an author throwing out all that is supposed to keep us readers engaged. And yet, somehow, it still works. Some of Ursula’s deaths, especially the early ones, are sharply witty in a macabre kind of way, like those posters with the Gorey illustrations of little kids dying in various inventive ways. But others are surprisingly moving, despite our assurance that “this too shall pass” at the mere turn of a page. And knowing things can change begins to make us fervently wish it to be so; we want these horrible things to not happen to her. And sometimes our wishes are granted. This being the early 20^th Century though, not always. This is the century, after all, of World War I, the flu epidemic, World War II, the Holocaust, the Blitz. Some things, no matter how many lives one has, so long as one lives them, can’t be avoided.

We also care about those who move in and out of Ursula’s lives, all of whom pretty much remain the same regardless of which life they appear in, including but not limited to: Hugh, her warmly approving father; Sylvie, her more sarcastic and biting mother who is less than happy but doesn’t seem to know what to do about it; Aunt Izzie, the wild-at-heart there-when-she-is-needed black sheep aunt; and Maurice, her obnoxious rising-star in the Home Office brother. This novel is as much about familial relations as it is about historical events and Atkinson brings her usual sharply honed eye to bear on both equally well — the little domestic moments at dinner or at play and the more grandly dramatic moments involving exploding bombs and rescue missions racing against time.

The period details of the blitz bring that time fully to life, and not only in the big moments. One of my favorite lines is when one of the characters says to Ursula, “it’s just the general sense of dirtiness, as if one will never be clean again, as if poor old London will never be clean again. Everything is so awfully shabby, you know?” It’s such a mundane complaint, such a small domestic complaint — shabby — the sort of line that is so mundane, so “non-dramatic” that most authors wouldn’t have thought of it, and yet, it feels like such an honest human complaint, one that fits perfectly naturally along all the more dramatic, bigger reactions to constant bombings and fires and deaths — the sobbing and screaming and senses gone numb. “Perfect” is a word that could be ascribed to many of the lines and moments in this book.

Life After Life is a writer’s book beyond its polished craft though. It’s also an author showing us what’s under the novel’s hood. It’s almost as if we’re perched over her shoulder, watching her write draft after draft, rolling each up into a little ball and tossing it onto the floor (Yes, I know that doesn’t happen anymore, but “hitting ‘Save As’ and renaming each version” doesn’t quite have the same feel) before trying again: “Hmm, I could have Ursula eschew university. No, she’ll go into classical studies. No, better yet, modern languages. Maybe she ends up in Bletchley Park. Or, wait, what if she ends up at a table with Hitler. With a gun!”

This is a book then that can be enjoyed on several levels, even if neither works on us in the usual fashion. Then again, its strengths are what one would expect of any particularly good book: vivid characters; lively, precise prose that can startle with its originality; attention to detail; a range of emotions. As for its (few) weaknesses: her abusive husband is not as fully formed as the other characters, feeling a bit too much like a creature of plot. But as he’s given very little page time, it’s a minor complaint. It’s perhaps a little overly long; I admit to temporarily bogging down a little in the blitz scenes, as vibrant and wholly re-created as they are. I wouldn’t cut much, maybe 30-40 pages in that section, and only very judiciously as they contain some of the most powerful moments in the book. What’s more surprising is how non-repetitive it feels, this novel based on a Groundhog Day kind of premise, though writ larger than the Bill Murray movie (also a great story — we should see more of these).

So what does it all add up to, all these chances to relive a life? It would have been easy to take the Aesop’s Fable way out, to have Ursula “learn something” from the accretion of experience, some big idea about life the author could pass on to the reader via Ursula’s big epiphany at the end. So props to Atkinson for not going that route. Yes, Ursula sometimes remembers enough to avoid a horror or two, but it’s at the subconscious level. Yes, there’s some talk about cycles and time and reincarnation, mostly with a psychiatrist her concerned parents have her see for a while, but these are short-lived conversations and simply raise an issue rather than hammer anything home. Ursula doesn’t learn anything in enough detail and substance to “get life right.” But she does learn “You just have to get on with life… We only have one after all, we should try and do our best.” I don’t know what other lives Kate Atkinson might have lived, but based on this and her detective novels (highly recommended), she’s doing her best with her novelist one.

The Lives of Tao

Before the first animals showed up on Earth, immortal incorporeal aliens crash-landed on our planet. They’ve been trying to get back to their own planet ever since. Their strategy has been to promote the intellectual and technological development of the most promising animal species they could find — humans. They do this by inhabiting certain promising humans and guiding their thoughts and actions. They knew it would take thousands of years, but someday they will direct humans to create the spaceships they need to get home.

Somewhere along the way the aliens had a disagreement about the techniques they use to promote human progress. One faction, the Genjix, believe that pitting humans against each other will encourage progression. For example, World War II caused rapid advancement in nuclear technology. The smaller faction, the Prophus, are peaceful and don’t want to be responsible for humans fighting amongst themselves. Now the Genjix and the Prophus are at war with each other. Since they exist only by inhabiting human bodies, this means the alien war has become a human war.

Tao is one of the peaceful Prophus aliens. He used to inhabit the body of Genghis Kahn, but he’s changed his ways since then. Now he works to oppose the Genjix. The host he’s been with for years has just been killed by one of the Genjix, so Tao must quickly find a new body. Unfortunately the only one available in the short time he has left is the chubby unfit “fixer upper” body of an IT technician named Roen. Now that Roen has a powerful and ambitious alien in his head, his life is about to change! He must be transformed from an out-of-shape unaggressive wimp with no pain tolerance and bad hand-eye coordination into a lean mean fighting machine. Meanwhile he must learn the history of the aliens, evade capture by the Genjix, deal with the ethical implications of his mission, and — hardest of all — talk to the widow of Tao’s previous host. All while trying to keep his new alien consciousness secret from his roommate and the girl he has a crush on.

The story of Roen’s new life is interspersed with Tao’s reminisces of his time inhabiting Genghis Kahn (which he considers an epic failure), thus we learn a little history about Genghis. Tao also tells Roen how the aliens have been responsible for the creativity of our most brilliant scholars, inventors, and artists and explains the unearthly reasons behind many of the significant unpleasant events in human history such as our wars, the Black Plague, and the Spanish Inquisition. Gradually Roen begins to accept the importance of his new position. If he doesn’t help the Prophus, the Genjix will have complete control over human destiny.

From page one I was completely entertained by Wesley Chu’s debut novel The Lives of Tao. The premise was fun, the pace was exciting, the writing was engaging, the story was compelling, the characters were likeable, and the humor was appealing. There’s a major twist at the end that, although I saw it coming, I was excited about. I can’t wait for the sequel, The Deaths of Tao. I’m listening to the audio version produced by Brilliance Audio. It’s read by Mikael Naramore who was perfect.

The Lazarus Machine by Paul Crilley

The Lazarus Machine hooked me at first because I really like the title. I mean, come on, that’s just a cool title. The Lazarus Machine is a young adult steampunk set in the late 1800’s in an alternative Earth. Paul Crilley, for the most part, pulls this time period off well, despite the Sherlock Holmes feel (which is starting to feel a little been-there-done-that for my taste). The book starts out with interesting steampunk inventions. There are steam powered computers, automatons powered by captured souls, steam carriages and the like. Many readers will be absolutely captivated by all that Crilley has created in his steampunk alternative earth.

However, once the story gets going, small problems arise. For example, in this Victorian-esque setting, many of the characters’ dialogue is a bit too modern for the time. Secondly, Crilley doesn’t present much history behind the creation of all of his devices and the steampunk world they inhabit. These two points put together make the plot feel like it could have happened in any historical time period. That being said, The Lazarus Machine is enjoyable enough that those details could easily be overlooked.

The Lazarus Machine is fairly short, which makes it a quick read. Therefore, while it does contain some world building problems, you have to hand it to Crilley for creating such a fascinating, unique (even for steampunk) world in such a short span of time. Furthermore, the characters are captivating, and despite my issues with the believability of their dialogue, Crilley uses their light banter to lighten up a fast paced, serious plot.

Characters themselves vary in believability. While the main protagonists, Sebastian, Octavia and others are believable, witty and realistically flawed, the antagonists were so purely evil that they were unbelievable, two dimensional and almost laughable. When I really examined the plot, I realized that it is fairly drab and predictable. There’s the Super Evil Dude, and the unlikely band of protagonists who have to rise out of the ashes to fight said Bad Man. The plot follows all of the paint-by-number twists and turns that such plots commonly do.

This disappointed me quite a bit because Crilley did so many things right. The plot is fast moving, the world is thought out and well built, especially in the time frame the author gave himself to do all of that. The characters are funny, engaging and full of their own believable flaws. Then, in contrast to all of that, you have this unbelievable antagonist and the plot pays dearly for it.

Crilley nicely ties up most plot points in The Lazarus Machine while leaving enough hanging that fans will anxiously wait for the next book in the series. There’s a lot here to like. Crilley establishes himself as a good author with a flair for world building and character development. That being said, the world itself could have used a bit more historical background, and the unfortunate cookie-cutter bad guy dragged the plot down into a predictable pit that it could have easily avoided. All in all, The Lazarus Machine is a good effort that will delight many readers, while leaving others, like myself, feeling a little disappointed.

Ken Liu, moderator

“Writing the Other” looked like the staff of a think-tank. Saladin Ahmed (Throne of the Crescent Moon), Kim Stanley Robinson, (2312, which won the Nebula), Ken Liu (“Paper Menagerie”) and Aliette de Bodard (who would win for the novelette “Immersion”) made up the panel.

Liu, who moderated, said that originally the theme of the panel had been how to write space aliens. Robinson said he agreed with Stanislaw Lem in Solaris; no one could write a believable space alien story because we wouldn’t ever be able to communicate with aliens. End of story. You can’t. De Bodard then weighed in with the argument that even if you could, you mustn’t, because “alien” equaled “non-human” and had been used as propaganda for centuries to dehumanize people of color and justify enslavement and genocide.

So, writing aliens: 1) You can’t, and 2) you shouldn’t anyway. While I was sighing deeply and writing “I am very disappointed right now,” in my notes, the panel went on to discuss the challenges of writing “the human other.” They did all agree that this could be done, although at least two of them, again, thought you probably shouldn’t, (although they had). This got pretty lively.

Saladin Ahmed raised an interesting issue when he talked about writing Islamic characters. Ahmed was raised Muslim and is Arab-American. When he wrote Throne of the Crescent Moon, he was not writing “the other.” He was writing what he knew. Those of us reading it who did not grow up in that culture might have been reading “the other.” A person in the audience, though, brought up the fact that Ahmed’s main character is an elder; elders might represent “the other” for Ahmed.

What do you think? Is there a benefit in writing about, and reading about, cultures that are different from your own? Are there risks? And, to you, just what is “the other,” anyway?

One commenter wins a book from our stacks.

The Best of Joe Haldeman

Stories by Joe Haldeman are always a good things and Subterranean Press has recently put out this “Best of” collection edited by Jonathan Strahan. The hardcover book has 504 pages and includes a general introduction by Joe Haldeman and 19 of his stories. Each story also has a short introduction which reveals some insight into its crafting — perhaps where the idea came from, or some trouble he had writing or placing it, or how he did his research, or his interactions with his agent or editor. I’m not a writer, but I always find these author introductions interesting.

The stories are, in order:

• “Hero” — (1972) This is the opening of Haldeman’s best-known novel, The Forever War, which I loved. I skipped this story since I’d read it before (it takes up about 50 pages in this collection). “Hero” will give readers a sense of what to expect if they haven’t read the novel, but in my opinion the novel only gets better after “The Hero,” so this story works better as an introduction to the novel rather than a representative sample.
• “Anniversary Project” — (1975) Humans from a million years in the future capture two humans from 1951 in their timecasting net. They want the old humans to help them analyze the ancient languages of humanity. This speculative story takes a look at how alien we might be in a million years. It’s an interesting and depressing study of the structure of communication, literature, and time.
• “Tricentennial” — (1976) It’s American’s 300^th birthday and the world is launching the exploratory spaceship Daedalus. This story is about the end and beginning of the human race and I felt so conflicted after I finished. It’s depressing, yet hopeful. It’s going to stick with me. “Tricentennial” won a Hugo award.
• “Blood Sisters” — (1979) This is a fun story with sailboats, explosions, and beautiful naked female clones. I wasn’t surprised to learn that it was published in Playboy. “Blood Sisters” is fluffy (like the bunnies) but fun (also like the bunnies, I guess.)
• “Lindsay and the Red City Blues” — (1980) A salesman spends a few days in Marrakesh. This story is incredibly evocative. I felt like I was there. But after reading this story, I don’t think I ever want to go to Marrakesh.
• “Manifest Destiny” — (1983) This one tells the story of the Mexican-American war from the perspective of an American youth who’s acting as a spy. I was impressed with the authentic feeling voice. “Manifest Destiny” has only the slightest fantastical element.
• “More Than the Sum of His Parts” — (1985) After an industrial accident, Dr. Wilson Cheetham, an engineer, is now half-cyborg and is writing a journal to chronicle his rehabilitation. It’s fascinating to watch him gradually lose his humanity. The introduction to this story is interesting, too. Haldeman reports that it began as a sample for one of his writing class’s assignments. (Haldeman teaches writing at MIT.)
• “Seasons” — (1985) A 12-person xenological expedition moves along successfully for months, then suddenly goes very wrong. We meet the survivors as they’re trying to get back to base camp. I couldn’t put this down.
• “The Monster” — (1986) A black Vietnam veteran explains what really happened to the fellow soldiers he was accused of killing. This is another of Haldeman’s experiments with voice and it’s effective.
• “The Hemingway Hoax” — (1990) A scholar of Ernest Hemingway vacations in Key West and is tempted by a conman to forge one of Hemingway’s lost works. I’ve reviewed this novella previously. “The Hemingway Hoax,” which takes up about 90 pages, is the longest story in the collection. It won a Hugo and Nebula award.
• “Graves” — (1992) This creepy story was inspired by a macabre incident Haldeman witnessed when he was a soldier in Vietnam. It’s about the army guys who work in “Graves” — the ones who deal with the dead bodies that come off the battlefield. “Graves” won a Nebula and World Fantasy Award.
• “None So Blind” — (1994) About half of the human cortex is devoted to visual processing. So what happens if you free it up to do something else? The story is fascinating. Haldeman’s premise that blind people aren’t using the visual cortex is not correct, but it’s still a really cool thought exercise. “None So Blind” won a Hugo Award.
• “For White Hill” — (1995) Artists from other planets are touring a ruined Earth to get inspiration for a project. When they get trapped on Earth by the planet’s imminent doom, one of the artists pens the last love story written on Earth. “For White Hill,” which features a woman who plugs into people’s brains to deliver therapy, illustrates one of the things I like about Joe Haldeman’s work. For Haldeman, it’s not space that’s the final frontier. It’s the human brain. The narrator says about the therapist: “I’d been to three times as many worlds as she. But she had been to stranger places.”
• “Civil Disobedience” — (2005) Continuing with the destruction of the Earth theme, this very short story was inspired by warnings of flooding from global warming.
• “Four Short Novels” — (2003) These four amusing stories each tell of life in the year 3001. Each is only a couple of pages long and begins with the phrase “Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die…”
  
• “Angel of Light” — (2005) I loved this story about a future where Islam and Christianity have merged into “Chrislam.” Our protagonist is a fundamentalist who has discovered an old pulp magazine in his cellar (it’s the issue shown here). He proceeds to analyze it through his Chrislam lens (with comments such as “I don’t think the artist was a good Muslim) and then tries to get rid of it.
• “The Mars Girl” — (2006) Joe Haldeman was asked to write a Heinlein Juvenile in a modern adult style, so this novella is his spin on Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars. It’s more risqué than a Heinlein Juvenile and it’s lots of fun.
• “Sleeping Dogs” — (2010) This is another story that must be inspired by Haldeman’s experiences in Vietnam. The protagonist, who is now out of the military, tries to recover the memories of a war he once fought on another planet. But maybe he should have let sleeping dogs lie?
• “Complete Sentence” — (2011) Another fascinating thought experiment. Could we punish criminals with virtual reality? In this story a convicted murderer can complete his life sentence in only one night.

All of the stories in The Best of Joe Haldeman are reprints, so some fans may already own many of them. Those who don’t however, will appreciate this collection. The Best of Joe Haldeman is a diverse set of stories that demonstrate the author’s versatility and mastery of the short form. For readers who aren’t familiar with his work, this collection is a great way to get to know Joe Haldeman.

Blood Song

I purchased Anthony Ryan’s Blood Song because it showed up in my Goodreads “recommended” list with a ton of 5-star reviews. I’m usually suspicious, however, when the reviews so overwhelmingly endorse the greatness of a book. Based on my experience with Blood Song, I was right to be suspicious.

While Blood Song is not horrible — I probably would’ve slid it 3 stars had I finished — I’m totally clueless as to how it earned so many 5-star reviews. Granted, I’m long past the age where I enjoy coming-of-age stories, if I ever did like them much. So maybe that’s the reason I don’t understand why Blood Song is getting so much love.

I read about 60% of the book, and it still seemed like it was in the prologue. I get that the harsh military training the characters endure is a big part of the story, but does it have to be so much of it? Call me cynical, but I got tired real quick of all the sob stories. Enough of the poor little boys abandoned by their parents already; this ain’t Little Orphan Annie. And OK, it’s pretty clear these 6th Order fellas are supposed to be all badass. I just don’t need to know every detail of what it takes to earn their Eagle Scout badges.

There is a good story in here somewhere; I did enjoy the parts that take place in the present. It’s just buried under all the writing. The dialogue isn’t very realistic and the story comes across as overly planned-out instead of flowing.

All due respect to Mr. Ryan; I apologize for being a hater, but there is just nothing special enough about Blood Song to hold its own against all the other good fantasy books that are currently out there. Anthony Ryan definitely has potential, but Blood Song isn’t there yet.

The Book of Lost Tales 1

My first attempt to read The Book of Lost Tales 1 was made way too early in my life and made certain that my response was to put it on the shelf and decide that all of this background stuff, especially taken from this early phase in Tolkien’s life as a writer, was way too different from the Middle-Earth stories that I loved for me to waste any time on it.

Looking at where the bookmark from my first attempt still sat when I picked it up again, I noticed that I didn’t even get much beyond the first several pages of the introductory chapter “The Cottage of Lost Play.” I remember thinking that it was just altogether too twee for me, what with the Eldar of Middle-Earth still being referred to as ‘faeries’ and the, to me, bizarre structure of a wanderer coming to a tiny cottage (bigger on the inside than the outside) peopled by dancing and singing children and adults who primarily sat around telling tales and reciting pretty mediocre poetry. It wasn’t really Middle-Earth now was it? Well, at the time I put down the volume and decided that I’d stick with the ‘real’ stuff of LORD OF THE RINGS, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion and that, as they say, was that for probably about two and a half decades.

Then it came about that I discovered my greatest love vis a vis Tolkien’s work was growing to be the posthumously published The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth, both of which contained some of the most beautiful and powerful of Tolkien’s writing. I looked at the corpus of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH with something of a new eye and decided that I might just dip into it and see what it was like. I consciously chose to first read those volumes that dealt with the matter of the First and Second ages of Middle-Earth and were latest in the chronology of composition thus presumably assuring that I was coming across ideas and stories that were closer in tone and content to the ones with which I was so familiar and that thrilled me with their mythic reverberations. I ended up loving what I found in Morgoth’s Ring and The War of the Jewels and decided that maybe this huge work undertaken by Christopher Tolkien to present the works of his father in toto wasn’t an altogether bad idea after all (especially given my hunger for more material regarding the tales as told in The Silmarillion).

So now I find myself re-embarking on the journey from the beginning and tackling the very Book of Lost Tales (part one) that defeated me in my youth. I’m glad I came back. Pushing through past the point in the first chapter beyond which I never made it before I actually found a fair bit to like, even though it wasn’t the undiluted Middle-Earth vintage I had initially wanted. I was actually reminded a bit of William Morris’ medieval romances that so influenced Tolkien as I read about the journey of Eriol the mariner upon the Isle of Tol Eressëa and once the tales themselves began to be told I saw that there was a surprising amount of coherence between these earliest versions of the myths of Middle-Earth with what eventually came to be published in The Silmarillion. The differences themselves were intriguing and I found as the chapters sped on the framing device didn’t bother me half as much as once it had.

I will readily admit that much of the poetry in this volume leaves something to be desired. I am not one of those readers of Tolkien that skips over the poems, and I think that many of them are quite beautiful (especially Bilbo’s poem of Eärendil sung in Rivendell), but the early ones showcased in this volume are not really my cup of tea (though one can certainly see Tolkien’s word-craft in them improving as time went on). The Cottage of Lost Play itself took on greater interest as well as I started to see some parallels between it and the ultimate development of Elrond’s house of Rivendell as “a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all’. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness.”

Eriol the mariner, a man from medieval England who has found his way to the magical isles of the west, sits in this pleasant house and has recounted to him many of the tales of the elder days when the Elves were alone in Middle-Earth, or mankind just arising from their ages long slumber. All of these tales are ones that a reader of The Silmarillion will already be familiar with: the creation myth of the Music of the Ainur, the building of Valinor and creation of the Two Trees of Light, the battles against Melkor (here named Melko) and his initial imprisonment, the coming of the Elves to the blessed lands and their ultimate rebellion and return to Middle-Earth in pursuit of Melko, and the myth of the creation of the sun and moon upon the death of the two trees.

Some of these are not very far from the more final versions that were presented in The Silmarillion, while others display drastic differences (such as the expanded legend of the sun and moon, the extensive bits that deal with cosmology and the make-up of the world, and the inclusion of Valar who mate and even include in their number some gods of war), but it is safe to say that unless you have a deep and abiding love for Middle-Earth, and especially tales of the elder days, you probably won’t get much out of this book. I would agree with those who claim this is really only for aficionados of Tolkien’s tales who want more and who are interested in seeing the development of his mythology. It is indeed a fascinating peek over the shoulder of Tolkien as he writes his tales and we finally start to get a glimpse of the sheer magnitude of the effort that his son expended simply in producing from the jumble of inter-related texts about the legends of the Elves a volume as slim and relatively cohesive as The Silmarillion.

I’m looking forward to tackling Book II of the lost tales and proceeding with the history of Middle-Earth texts at least up to volume 5 to continue to get my fix and maybe even get a taste of some legends of the elder days that I haven’t already experienced in another form. The Book of Lost Tales 1 is recommended for hardcore Tolkien fans who don’t mind critical apparatus and multiple versions of tales.

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The Goddess Inheritance

Aimée Carter’s GODDESS TEST series has always been a bumpy ride for me, with its sometimes baffling take on Greek mythology and its focus on petty bickering even in the face of potential worldwide catastrophe. Yet I always felt there was enough of a seed of a good story here that I wanted to see how Carter would finish it out, so I decided to read the final book, The Goddess Inheritance. I’ve now gotten a little over halfway through the book and am giving up. I’ve decided I simply don’t care anymore.

We pick up as Kate is on the verge of giving birth in captivity — having been kidnapped by Calliope and Cronus at the end of the last book — and the other gods having just realized she’s actually missing. Then she does give birth, in the most Mary Sue manner one can imagine, i.e. with none of the commonplace annoyances that come with childbirth. Labor only lasts a few minutes. She’s cleaned up instantly by magic, and her body restored to its original state a few minutes later by magic. And then she and the baby are separated and she doesn’t have to do any of the work of caring for him, and the baby doesn’t even come across as having any personality or quirks — his purpose in the story is really just as a plot device and bargaining chip.

I’ll leave out some of the details to avoid too many spoilers, but suffice it to say that Kate is reunited with the other Olympian gods, including her husband Henry. They are at war with Cronus, who is destroying entire major cities in his wrath. Kate knows why Cronus is angry, but takes a long time to tell anyone what’s really going on even though there are so many lives at stake. And those millions of lost lives never really feel real to the reader; these disasters are all offscreen, as are the gods’ battles against Cronus. Gods fighting Titans over the fate of all humanity should be interesting stuff! But Kate just gets told about all of it secondhand.

I could blame the other gods for not keeping her in the loop, but I really feel like this was a mistake of the author to not give the point-of-view character anything interesting to show us. Instead, what we are stuck reading about are endless arguments and conversations about the same topics, around and around and over and over. And the only idea Kate ever has is to try to sacrifice herself, over and over and over, even though that clearly didn’t work so well the first time.

I’m also increasingly weirded out by the fact that Kate isn’t weirded out that she’s married to her uncle. She’ll talk about her father this, her uncle Philip that, without ever seeming to really touch on the big elephant in the room, which is that Henry is her uncle too. This is mythologically accurate, of course, but Kate was raised as an ordinary modern girl for seventeen years. This would not be so easy to take in stride. Either she should be disturbed by this, or else Carter should have written it so that they aren’t really uncle and niece. Certainly she was willing to alter mythology in many other ways, so why not this?

Finally, I realized partway through this book that I had forgotten some of the lesser gods’ pseudonyms and wasn’t sure who was who anymore, and their personalities weren’t distinct enough in this installment to figure it out. And on the heels of that, I decided I didn’t really care.

Overall, I found the GODDESS TEST series to be uneven, and this final installment is plodding and weirdly detached from what would seem to be the most important plot points, namely Cronus’s war against the gods and his murder of millions of humans. Kate has become much less likable than she was at the beginning of the series, and spends most of the book making huge mistakes without thinking them through. I do not recommend The Goddess Inheritance.