John Constantine, Hellblazer: All His Engines

There are so many options available to the reader who wants to meet John Constantine for the first time. He was created by Alan Moore in his groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing (Moore’s entry into American comics). Another good place to start is with Jamie Delano’s Hellblazer: Original Sins, the volume collecting the first issues of Constantine’s solo title Hellblazer — the longest running title in the history of Vertigo, DC’s line of comics with adult content and adult themes (both in terms of being explicit and being intellectually complex). Unfortunately, DC just recently canceled this title at issue #300 and has replaced it with a PG-version starring a younger Constantine. The title of this series is simply Constantine. He also appears regularly in the New 52 series Justice League Dark, a new title in the rebooted DC Universe. I would not recommend getting to know Constantine for the first time through Justice League Dark or Constantine. Instead, I offer another frequently recommended first title: John Constantine Hellblazer: All His Engines by Mike Carey.

All His Engines is often recommended as a good entry point into the world of Constantine because it’s a graphic novel instead of a trade collection (which brings together a series of monthly issues that make up separate story arcs). I reserve the term graphic novel for stories that are meant to have a clear beginning and end, have a unified theme in addition to a unified plot, and are not meant to be part of an ongoing series even if the main character IS part of an ongoing series. All His Engines fits this definition. Carey has written this novel to introduce new readers to the character of Constantine, to his most defining modes of action, and to his best friend and driver Chas. The version of the book I have even includes a full five-page informative essay about John Constantine’s fictional history AND the history of his creation and development over time by different writers. Comic books rarely have such long essays, and this one is excellent. Finally, the book includes a list of fourteen recommended Hellblazer titles, with a short summary of each book. So, even on an editorial level, this book is put together as a handbook for the new reader, the reader I have in mind when writing most of my reviews.

The story of All His Engines is excellent and bears all the hallmarks of a typical Hellblazer story: Constantine sets out to help a friend — in this case, a young girl is in a coma, and we realize this phenomenon is spreading world-wide and is of demonic origin. As always, we admire Constantine’s willingness to help, particularly when the personal threats to his own health are high. However, people tend to die around him — as is seen in this book, too — so he’s not always the person anybody wants to call in. He’s a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency kind of guy. But when magic and demons and evil spirits are involved, the chain-smoking Constantine is the man you want to call. He is always in danger of losing out in his going up against demons and the like, but Constantine always figures out a way to double-cross the double-crossing demon—this aspect is often the most thrilling part of a Hellblazer story: “How will he get out of it THIS time?” However, he has a reputation in the realms beyond ours, and even Satan is wary of him. Only Constantine can face up to all kinds of demons, and he does so with a Billy Idol sneer (I mean this comparison in the best way), so when even he gets scared by what he sees, we realize that there’s some serious sh*t about to go down.

I’m not sure I’ve ever written “sh*t” in a book review, but my impulse is key to Constantine’s character and the tone of these books. That’s partly why I object to the new PG-versions of his character: I can’t imagine a censored Constantine or even one who has to have his speech littered with asterisks. Constantine was created by a British writer, and very few American writers wrote any of the 300 issues of Hellblazer. It’s always been a mark of the book that often harsh, British humor and satire would be central to it and the characters. All His Engines — like all Hellblazer titles — should not be read if you have any problem with the F-bomb and the rest of that rowdy family of words.

You also shouldn’t read this book or any other Hellblazer titles if you don’t like explicitly depicted horrific scenes, including images of demons and sacrifice and physical and psychological torture of all imaginable types. There’s one two-page image that is enough to make the squeamish put down this book in a fire if one weren’t worried that the demons in hell would scream as it burned. I joke, but if you are bothered by portrayals of satanic rituals and blood sacrifice (and human sacrifice), then you do NOT want to read this book. There’s even one disgusting looking demon who lives in a decaying mansion with a pool full of decaying . . . . Well, I’ll let you use your imagination on this one. I think you’ve got the picture by now.

So why do I recommend All His Engines? Well, I think the art and story are good and are an excellent introduction to one of my all-time favorite characters and series. It’s X-Rated Harry Potter on Crack (In fact, look up Carey’s ongoing comic The Unwritten, about a Harry Potter-type character). And it’s excellent horror literature, and I make this claim as one who has always hated horror movies and fiction. Horror movies just creep me out with the music and edge-of-your seat tension and made-you-jump surprises. I do not like ANY Horror movies. Period. And the only Horror fiction I like is of the older type: Poe and Lovecraft, for example.

So why am I recommending a title that falls clearly in the category of Horror? In starting to read comics in my late 30s, I found out that I do like Horror in comics. Without the creepy music, suspense, and surprises of movies, the images don’t really bother me. My favorite comic book series ever — Sandman — has many elements of Horror in it. The Walking Dead and Locke & Key are also appealing to me, as are the many translations into comics of stories by Poe and Lovecraft (Keep an eye out for future reviews). Fatale by Brubaker is a mix of noir and Lovecraft. Swamp Thing, too, falls into the category of Horror.

Finally, of course, we have Hellblazer, the most horrific title I read on a regular basis. I have all 300 issues, and it’s one of the most consistently great titles ever written in the field of comics. Also, some of the greatest names in comics have written Hellblazer. As one who often lectures on the history of Jazz, I tell my students that if they just listened to all of Miles Davis’s albums and studied his career, they would be introduced to some of the greatest names in jazz, from Bird and Diz to Coltrane and Bill Evans to Wayne Shorter and Hancock. The same is true for Hellblazer. If you picked one title to read to get an introduction to the best British writers in the field of comics, Hellblazer would be the best one. Starting with Alan Moore and ending with Peter Milligan with issue #300, Hellblazer featured the following brilliant minds: Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Mike Carey, Andy Diggle, Si Spencer, Paul Jenkins, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman. Only a few Americans wrote for the series, but considering that the main one is Brian Azzarrello of 100 Bullets fame, you can see that this series has brought together some of the best contemporary, post-1986 authors in comics.

I plan on reviewing more Hellblazer titles in future columns, but I want to recommend this one as a good starting point. Each writer brings his own interests to the title, some focusing on political concerns specific to Britain, some focusing on social and environmental concerns of interest to us all, and some focusing on developing Constantine’s character and his relationships with others. Other writers focus on his magic and his relationship with other magical characters in the DC Universe (DCU).

I have a real love for the magical and mystical side of the DCU, and Constatine is at its heart. His character is British noir, supernatural PI, and I suppose that model fits in with the incredibly trendy Urban Fantasy best represented by Harry Dresden (as I understand it). But I like my British, trench-coat wearing, street-smart magician to take the form of John Constantine. As you can see, there’s a lot to read in the world of John Constantine, so you’ll want to go ahead and get started. Put in an order for Hellblazer: All His Engines.

Other works by Mike Carey: When I finally decided to read a novel in this Urban Fantasy sub-genre outside of comics, I knew I could trust Mike Carey, so I’ve recently picked up the first book in his Felix Castor series, which is very much cast in the Hellblazer mold: The Devil You Know. If you’ve heard of but have not read the Felix Castor novels, don’t avoid them because you think he might be a Dresden knock-off: Carey was writing Constantine — an older character than Dresden — as early as 2002, only two years after the first Dresden novel appeared. Mike Carey has several other comic book series worth checking out: the finished, three-volume comic book Crossing Midnight, the ongoing and much-praised title The Unwritten, and the completed 75-issue series Lucifer, a spin-off from Gaiman’s Sandman. This series went out of print, but it looks like they are reissuing it. I can’t recommend Lucifer enough. If you like Sandman at all, you’ll want to get these newly published volumes as they come out. Gaiman gave Carey his blessing and encouragement in writing this series, and I think that it often reaches the level of greatness seen in Sandman in both art and writing. I have no idea why this comic book isn’t as praised as much as Sandman. Run don’t walk: Lucifer needs to be on your bookshelf.

The Red Plague Affair

It is never easy to start a series with a sequel, and The Red Plague Affair is the sequel to the first book in Lilith Saintcrow’s BANNON AND CLARE series, The Iron Wyrm Affair, which introduced these characters. (The Damnation Affair is a related novel set in the same world with different characters.) I haven’t read The Iron Wyrm Affair, but The Red Plague Affair was still pretty accessible. Saintcrow takes the steampunk London we love and creates a different, almost mythological spin.

The 19^th century city where these stories take place is called Londinium, and it is ruled by Queen Victrix, who is a human but also the Vessel for Brittania. Brittania is the deity or spirit of the land, who rules through a human agent. Emma Bannon is a Prime Sorceress, trained in the college of sorcery, and her arts are those of the Endor, or dark magic (as opposed to the magic of Mending, or light magic). Her friend and partner Archibald Clare is a mentath, a trained analyst who uses observation and logic to solve problems. A mentath is the opposite of a sorcerer, and the “irrationality” of sorcery is baffling to mentaths; this tension is part of the charm of this series.

As the title suggests, a plague is released in the city, a disease that combines magic with basic germ theory to create a deadly epidemic. To discover its cause and a cure, Emma confronts a former friend, Kim Rudyard, and, in doing so, uncovers a secret about one of her Shields; magically trained bodyguards who not only physically protect magical practitioners but also, apparently, balance out magical energies as well. From this book, I would say that Emma is very hard on her Shields.

The book is a nice blend of mystery, adventure, magic and court politics. Emma is not above offending the Prince Consort, Alberich, and putting herself at risk politically with the Queen. Archibald’s fixation on a Moriarty-like rival and his desire for a strange drug hint at future dangers.

The story moves along briskly. The British folklore and mythology add an element of creepy strangeness to an otherwise straightforward adventure. I like the characters of Clare and Bannon, but I did think Saintcrow got a little careless with the writing sometimes. “Mentath,” for instance, sounds a lot like “mentat” from the Dune series; and we read about Emma’s jeweled earrings, or the curls above her ears, a few times too many. Of course I don’t read steampunk for its breathtaking historical accuracy, but, as with other steampunk works, I had to wonder about the world-building logic at times. If each land has an entity or deity like Brittania, then I really don’t see how there can be a British Empire, unless on some other plane Brittania has managed to cow the other entities; clearly the New World exercise in a democratic republic never would have happened; would the American continent’s deity be content to possess a new person every few years, after an election? Seems unlikely. It’s also not particularly clear why, in a world that evolved this way, with women as likely as men to be Vessels, the roles of women would be as limited as they were in our 19^th century.

Emma and Archibald are not particularly good people; or perhaps I should say that as agents of the Crown they have had to ignore their better nature for Queen and country. Torturing someone to get information, for example, is considered unsavory but necessary.

For all that, The Red Plague Affair has a nice Holmesian flavor, which is clearly what Saintcrow is going for. Good descriptions and dialogue keep the story moving along. I don’t always agree with Emma’s moral choices, but I admire her passion, and I enjoyed this book.

The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf

I rarely read fairytale retellings, but I picked up The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf because its author, Tia Nevitt, is a friend of mine. She’s a former fellow SFF blogger and she lives just a few minutes away from me, so we chat occasionally and have gotten together a few times. Also, I enjoyed her first published novel, the first in her ACCIDENTAL ENCHANTMENTS series, The Sevenfold Spell, a re-telling of Sleeping Beauty which focuses on the minor characters in the story. I read it without telling her I was reading it, just so I wouldn’t have to admit I didn’t like it if it failed to please. (Fortunately, I did like it!)

The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf has a similar set-up. In this case, Tia delightfully mangles the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In Tia’s version the evil queen has cursed a former lover, Prince Richard, with the magic mirror — he must truthfully answer three questions for her every morning and evening. She uses Richard’s knowledge to rule her land tyrannically and to assure herself that she is still “the fairest of them all.” The seventh dwarf of the title is a young woman named Gretchen who is teased for being short and misshapen. When she hears about a farm where dwarves live, she goes there to try to find a husband. Soon she meets Angelika, the beautiful princess who is seeking shelter from her evil stepmother, the queen. When Prince Richard happens along and sees the princess, he must tell the truth: the evil queen is no longer the fairest of them all. This, as you might expect, causes all sorts of problems for everybody.

Tia’s ACCIDENTAL ENCHANTMENTS stories, published by Harlequin’s ebook imprint, are definitely romances. I don’t usually like romance novels, but what sets Tia’s stories apart is her in-depth characterization of minor characters and the way she uses their troubles to explore real human emotions. In this story, I truly felt for Gretchen who sees herself as an outsider who can never fit in. She wants to be a good person, but the bullying she experiences and her jealousy of “normal” girls threatens to negatively affect her personality. When she decides to escape, she goes to the farm hoping simply to find people like her and a decent partner who can help her share the burdens of life. Based on her past experiences in life, she doesn’t dare to hope for anything more, especially not for love.

Richard and Angelika likewise, have been shaped by their experiences. Richard used to be a pampered playboy prince until the queen cursed him, and Angelika would have been a beautiful pampered princess if not for her jealous stepmother. Their own suffering at the evil queen’s hand has made them aware of the misery of others in her realm. When Gretchen, Prince Richard, and Angelika meet, they all learn a lot about beauty, vanity, and love. The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf is definitely a romance novel, but Tia’s attention to each character’s psychological growth and the formation of healthy romantic relationships distinguishes her work from the types of romance novels that I hate.

The audio version of The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf which I listened to is just over 4½ hours long. I wasn’t crazy about narrator Angela Park’s voice — it tends to get high and squeaky at points and sometimes she over-enunciates as if she’s reading to a child (but this is definitely not a book for children). Once I got over this, I was able to enjoy the story, but I’d suggest trying the audio sample before investing in that version ($4.95). If you don’t like it, buy the Kindle version instead. It’s currently selling for only $1.99.

Please identify just one cover that has not yet been identified correctly so that others will have a chance to play. If they’re not all identified by next Thursday, you can come back and identify more. Each of your correct entries enters you into a drawing to win a book of your choice from our stacks.

Winners are notified in the comments, so make sure to check the notification box or remember to check back in about 10 days.

Good Luck!

“Barry’s Tale,” a novella which has been nominated for this year’s Nebula Award, appears in Buffalito Buffet, one of a number of collections written by Lawrence M. Schoen regarding The Amazing Conroy and his buffalito, Reggie. And that calls for an explanation, doesn’t it? “The Amazing Conroy” is man who formerly made his living as a stage hypnotist, but who, at the time of this story, has a nascent business marketing buffalitos, alien creatures that look like miniature buffaloes  but are as cuddly as puppies and will eat literally anything. (Ball bearings are a particularly favorite treat.)

As this novella opens, Conroy has traveled to Colson’s World, a watery planet with a single, relatively small landmass. It was discovered by Amadeus Colson, a famously rich man and recluse. Colson has lived on the planet for more than 60 years, along with a few hundred humans, ten thousand head of cattle, and a half million bison. Access to the planet by anyone else is extremely restricted, except for once a year when Colson hosts a barbecue competition. Conroy travels to Colson’s World in order to secure the man’s endorsement for his business. And besides, Conroy is a foodie, and the thought of all that barbecue makes his mouth water.

The first person Conroy sees upon his arrival on the planet is Bethany Colson, one of his college classmates and a woman he had dated for a short time. Bethany looks like she hasn’t aged a day, even though it’s been a few decades. She tells Colson that it has something to do with both her genetics and the planet, but she just doesn’t age. Neither does her great-grandfather, who is over a hundred years old but appears to be in his forties. Conroy accepts Bethany’s explanation, but there is more to the story that she doesn’t know, and finding that out is what this story is really about.

The complication that leads us to the explanation is Angela, one of the hundreds of orphans Bethany and her great-grandfather care for. Angela is six, and she is heavily drugged for a neurological condition. The nature of this affliction only becomes clear when Angela is threatened by a thoat — a massive grazing animal, much like a bison except for its greater size (and named for creatures from Edgar Rice Burrough’s Mars). Angela simply makes the thoat disappear. And that’s the problem: when she’s angry or frightened, Angela just makes the source of her anger or fear disappear. The problem is growing worse, and she doesn’t seem to have any control over it.

Conroy believes that his skill with hypnosis might help Angela. If so, he might be just in time, because Bethany’s great-grandfather is making noises about having to “do something” about Angela in order to protect the other children. If that sounds ominous, it is.

The story unravels from there with gentle humor. The prose is clear and unornamented, but not without a strong voice; Colson is a full-rounded character, and his first-person narration conveys his spirit and makes a reader eager to read more of Schoen’s stories about him. The science involved in Conroy’s hypnosis is lucidly explained, as might be expected from an author with a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology who taught at the college level for a decade.

This work reminded me of some of the best writers from the early days of science fiction. He brings to mind writers like Zenna Henderson with his prose style. His plotting is sufficient to the story, and there’s enough action and hazard to keep things interesting. I’m surprised that a story like this, which is something of a throwback to the early days of SF in its absence of advanced physics and literary furbelows, has been nominated for a Nebula Award, but I’m glad it has. It’s a strong story, and great fun to read.

Seeds of Rebellion

In the second BEYONDERS book, Seeds of Rebellion, Jason has made it back to his own world after attempting to destroy the emperor Maldor in Lyrian, the parallel universe he accidentally stumbled into after being swallowed by a hippopotamus at the zoo. Jason is unhappy at home because Rachel is still stuck in Lyrian and being hunted by the bad guys. After doing some research on the internet, he discovers that Rachel’s parents are desperately trying to find her, but Jason feels like he can’t contact them or he’ll be a suspect in the crime. He’s afraid to tell anyone about Lyrian — people will just think he’s crazy and he might be institutionalized. That would make it impossible for him to do what he really wants to do — go back to Lyrian, let everyone know that the quest they were on is doomed, and tell Rachel how to get back to her parents. Meanwhile, he spends plenty of time exercising so that when he does get back, he’ll be fit enough to face all the trials he knows are coming.

Eventually Jason does manage to return to Lyrian with the important news. Then he and Rachel help to muster up a small force that is willing to risk rebelling against the emperor. There’s only a slight chance that they can succeed, but they have to take that chance. There’s no way that Maldor is going to let Jason and Rachel get back home, and the people of Lyrian have lived too long under a tyrant’s rule.

This time Jason meets some more of the weird mage-crafted races of Lyrian including a race of dwarves who turn into giants when the sun goes down. He explores secret tunnels, hears prophecies, loses his first sword fight, collects explosives, learns a lot about the history of Lyrian, eats some magic mushrooms, meets a beautiful princess, fights zombies, grows moss on his neck, and travels some harsh exotic terrain. Meanwhile, Rachel is beginning to acquire some magical talents of her own.

I mentioned in my review of the first BEYONDERS book, A World Without Heroes, that I appreciated Brandon Mull’s subtle messages for children. He again does a good job with this, showing us, for example, the consequences of addiction; the necessity of being wary of someone who you know has betrayed others and being careful about who you can trust; the benefits of working as a team and being reliable when it comes to doing your part.

I particularly like how Mull’s child heroes aren’t doing everything themselves. They’re working as small but significant parts of a team that is mostly adults. They ask smart questions, anticipate future problems, and contribute meaningfully while respecting the skills and wisdom of their adult companions.

Some of the plot of Seeds of Rebellion drags (there’s a lot of travelling) but young readers who enjoy spending time with Jason and Rachel probably won’t notice and will be anxious to move on to book 3, Chasing the Prophecy. This is a solid addition to the BEYONDERS series. I recommend the audio version narrated by Jeremy Bobb.

Green

Green, by Jay Lake, follows the sometimes horrific, sometimes savage, sometimes victorious story of its titular first-person narrator. As a toddler, Green (that only becomes her name well into the novel) is sold off by her single-parent father and taken by ship from her vaguely Southeast-Asian country to the city of Copper Downs, a cold northern kingdom full of pale-skinned people. Over a little more than a dozen years, she discovers the purpose behind her training, returns home, trains to be an assassin, and faces multiple gods.

Lake divides his novel into three major sections. First is Green’s time in Copper Downs, ruled for the past four centuries by a seemingly immortal Duke under whose rule some are beginning to chafe. There she is kept isolated in a walled compound and trained by various Mistresses (including a non-human known as Dancing Mistress) in a plentitude of arts and knowledge, not learning the purpose of all this until near the end of the section, which closes in dramatic fashion. Second is her return home to Kalimpura, where she takes service in the Temple of the Lily Goddess and hones the fighting/killing skills she had learned in the compound. Finally, she returns to Copper Downs where she reunites with some familiar folks (both good and bad) from her past and faces the consequences of her actions when last she was there.

While the first section caught and kept my interest, I admit my attention flagged as Green went on and I became less and less enamored with both the character and the plot points. But it did start out promising. Green’s voice was one that immediately captivated me as she recalled one of her earliest memories:

Though I would come to change the fate of cities and of gods, then I was merely a small, grubby child in a small, grubby corner of the world. I did not have many words. Even so, I knew that my grandmother was lashed astride the back of Papa’s patient beast. She was so very still and silent that day, except for her bells… My silk is long lost now, as are my several attempts to replace it. Be patient: I will explain how this came to be. Before that, will explain how I came to be. If you do not understand this day, earliest in my memory like the first bird that ever grew feathers and threw itself from the limbs of a tree, then you will understand nothing of me and all that has graced and cursed my life in the years since.

I was swept up in her voice and happily followed her through the mysterious training she receives inside the compound: cooking, arts and history (though nothing of contemporary times), how to recognize poisons, the physical training she received at the hands (claws) of the feline Dancing Mistress, despite the off-putting viciousness of the mistreatment she received at the hands of her main trainer. There were some plausibility issues, some plot points that didn’t seem to hold up if looked at too closely, but these were outweighed by the authority of Green’s voice, as was the somewhat abrupt/anti-climactic “big event” toward the end of the section. Beyond the voice, though, I also liked an underlying depth to this section, the themes it dealt with, including identity, slavery, and colonialism.

The second section, though, didn’t maintain the promise the first had offered. There was more “action” in this section, but this meant a little less of that reflective, introspective character-driven voice that I’d so responded to in the first section. When that voice begins to interact with a wider world, it becomes more distant and harder to engage with as Green never felt emotionally connected to anyone or events. Unlike the first section, this plot also felt a bit more familiar to other fantasy novels. Another problem was that coincidences and implausibility began to pile up a bit more noticeably, and its dramatic ending felt wholly contrived. And the much greater focus on sexuality I found more than a bit discomfiting, not because of its graphic nature (though I could have done without the euphemism “sweetpocket”), its lesbianism, or its flirting with sadomasochism, but because all of this involved a still underage girl.

The third section widens the scope even more, bringing in a possibly world-changing event: the creation of a new god, in part because of what Green had done during her first time at Copper Downs. The action ratchets up as well, with more fighting, and also more sex (still discomfiting). I never really felt a good grip on this section, partly because, as mentioned, my attention had begun to flag, and partly because the underlying premise all felt a bit muddy, unnecessarily so. It also felt very disjointed and arbitrary, without it all fitting into a unified context of worldbuilding.

It was a disappointing finish to a book that had captured me so fully so early; part of me really wished Lake had simply ended Green with section one and called it a novella. I plan on picking up the sequel, Endurance, but also plan on being less patient with it. Here’s hoping it recaptures some of the early winning nature of Green.

Coulson lives. Coulson lives!! I’m pretty sure that this is the equivalent of the Marvel fandom pulling an “I believe in fairies!” moment. Also, here’s the full trailer for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Which authors write the best action sequences?

The nominees for this year’s Mythopoeic Award have been announced. This is one of my favorite awards because of their willingness to look at the field broadly. The graphic novel Digger  is included with the best novel, and it also looks at trilogies as a whole, rather than breaking them into parts. If you’re interested in the academic study of fantasy literature, this award also has separate categories for that. Also, the nominees for the Shirley Jackson award have been announced, which honors fantasy at the horror end of the spectrum.

You can currently download a copy of Neil Gaiman’s short story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” on Amazon for free, and it includes an excerpt of his upcoming novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Science fiction for economists, a list by the Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman.

You can win a copy of this year’s Nebula Awards Showcase anthology over at The Book Smugglers.

And we got this information from Albino Dragon, a games publisher.

Albino Dragon, a tabletop game developer and publisher, is proud to announce their newest project, a customized Bicycle playing cards based on celebrated fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind. The company has teamed up with Rothfuss to provide fans with a breathtaking deck of cards that will sweep you into the land of faeries folk, bards, tinkers and more.

Inspired by the incredible world built by Rothfuss, each card will be lovingly designed by artist, Shane Tyree, lead artist and graphic designer with Albino Dragon, who has contributed artwork to a number of projects including projects by Wizards of The Coast, Fantasy Flight Games, Alderac Entertainment Group, Ace of Spies & Genegrafter (Albino Dragon), and the wildly successful Call of Cthulhu and White Rabbit playing cards.

The project will be funded by Kickstarter and it joins the family of already successful projects Albino Dragon has created using crowdfunding. Pledges from the Kickstarter will go to offsetting printing, shipping, and production. Albino Dragon strives to make the most of their Kickstarters through innovative rewards and updates. For example, the company has regular Google Hangouts with backers and fans so they can give their input into projects. Previous projects have included incorporating backer’s likeness or ideas into card designs.

To find out more about The Name of The Wind Kickstarter please visit: (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1460165270/the-name-of-the-wind-playing-cards ) Or ‘like’ Albino Dragon on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AlbinoDragonGames) or follow them on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thealbinodragon)

Be warned, Kickstarter can be dangerous to your wallet.

Have a wonderful Wednesday, and good reading!

Samuel R. Delaney wrote Triton in 1974, but it was published in 1976, after his best-seller Dhalgren. Delany’s subtitle for this book was “An Amorphous Heterotopia,” and he stated at the time that the book was inspired by (or a response to) Ursula LeGuin’s “ambiguous utopia” The Dispossessed. Oh, how I wish that I had re-read that book instead of picking up this one.

Delany is a brilliant observer of humanity. I like what I have read of his memoirs and essays. I enjoyed The Fall of the Towers and Neveryona. With Triton, I was just pulled in too many directions. It reads like 1970s vintage social commentary, which it is; it reads at times like satire, which it also is; it reads like imperfectly processed psychodrama in which at least two characters (gay game-playing Lawrence and “big, black and lazy” Sam) are stand-ins for aspects of Delany himself. The book is 330 pages long. It felt like twice that.

Triton’s main character is Bron Helstrom, who lives on Neptune’s moon in the domed city of Tethys. He has a job, but even people who don’t have jobs are supported on egalitarian Triton. Sexuality is open and changeable; nobody cares who you have sex with or what gender you choose to be. This seems to be true on most if not all of the moon colonies, but hidebound “worlds” like Mars and Earth are more uptight. As the book starts, the reader discovers that there is a war between Earth and some of the moon colonies, but that Triton is neutral, at least for now. Bron has chosen to live in a same-gender, but not gay commune, and he continually fends off advances from Lawrence, his friend, who is in his seventies and a homosexual, and tries to get over his jealousy of Sam, the handsome, muscular black man who also lives in the commune. Sam works for the Triton government.

Bron encounters a performance artist who calls herself the Spike in the Unlicensed Sector of Tethys. The Spike and her troupe perform “micro-theater” for “unique audiences”; in Bron’s case an audience of one. Bron is smitten with the Spike. Soon she leaves Triton. Sam takes Bron on a trip to Earth when Bron is on a temporary layoff because of “the war.” Things go badly on Earth for Bron. He is detained and roughed up by Earth security; he meets the Spike again and she breaks up with him. And… oh, yes, Earth kills several of the people in Sam’s party, and declares war on Triton.

The war lasts about half a day. The colonies win, killing at least twenty percent of the human population of Earth. Bron’s feelings are hurt by the Spike’s break-up letter, so he has a sex-change and becomes a woman, but he still isn’t happy.

Life is hard when you’re Bron.

For the most part, the social satire part of this book works. Bron obsesses over what to wear (or not wear, as nudity is an option); people are more concerned about their own lives and dramas than about the war. Everybody is reduced to a “type.” (Bron tells Lawrence that he likes to do things that people don’t expect him to do, and Lawrence says, “That’s a type.”) Bron’s inability to be happy is certainly written convincingly here. It’s just that he is such an unpleasant, uncaring person that I didn’t care. Honestly, there are probably black holes that are more giving and open than Bron. His habit of mentally rewriting history when he thinks back on an incident, particularly if his feelings are hurt, is accurate… but we see this over and over. Bron changes, but he does not grow. This is part of Delany’s point, but it damages the book.

Delany’s vaguely conceived future society did not work for me. Delany plays with gender role reversals and language; cops on Triton are called “e-girls” regardless of gender, but these changes are barely skin deep, and Delany never explains how they came about. Triton is kind of socialist. No one goes without food or shelter, and there are no taxes; you only pay for the services you use. How does that work? It’s a colony, what does it produce? If Earth is conquered, where will the moon colonies sell their goods (if they have any?) How does Triton make its artificial food? Do they import things? Export things? What? What caused the war? What’s at stake in the war? These are never explained.

Theoretically, sex is post-Puritan and anything goes. Medical advances make changing gender, body-type, or skin color easy. Bron was a prostitute for a period of time when he lived on Mars. From the number of men he meets in the course of the story who were also prostitutes, this is apparently about as common as being a barista is now. Why, then, does Bron yammer on about it constantly? And a hundred-fifty years in the future, when we’ve all shed our hang-ups and become so free and open, why are words like “faggot,” “hustler” and the “N-word” still in use as pejoratives?

Delany also chooses a didactic style in which characters lecture each other instead of talk to each other, distancing the reader even further. Again, this is intentional, and Delany is clearly spoofing some of the academics he knew at the time, but it does not work in service to the story. Two passages — the disturbing scene where Bron is taken away by Earth security forces, imprisoned and tortured; and an attack on the city of Tethys — suddenly drop into immediate, concrete words, before the prose floats away again to become showy and cerebral rather than authentic.

There is yet another way to look at Triton, and that’s psychologically. Delany does not have control of his story here. Throughout the book, Bron tells people, “It’s hard to get what you want when you don’t know what you want.” It’s tempting, and equally viable, to see the Spike, the woman Bron both connects with, and can’t connect with, as the gay Delany’s female soul-mate and wife; Lawrence and Sam as magical aspects of himself who conspire to humble the blond, classically handsome “perfect man” Bron, forcing him to acknowledge his real desires and confront his self-loathing. Bron can also be seen as a character common in gay literature, a “type,” so to speak: the straight man who is flattered by the attentions of the gay man even though he continually rejects him. How tempting it is to see a later passage in the book, when Bron, in female form, is sexually rejected by Sam, as a moment of personal revenge for Delany.

Basically, there is a reason why The Dispossessed is still being read in high schools and colleges, and this book isn’t. Delany was ringing all the 1970s bells here. His desire to say something about being the outsider, about not knowing what you want, about feminism, about internalized hatred and homophobia, about governments, and about war, got in the way of him telling a story. It’s hard to say what you want, when you don’t know what you want to say.

Hunter’s Prayer

“I am not a nice person” — Jill Kismet

Jill Kismet is a Hunter — she keeps her city safe by tracking and destroying the creatures of the Nightside — those things that come out of hell to prey on humans. The cops call on Jill when there’s a crime that seems to involve paranormal beings. Jill takes care of it while the cops cover it up. Jill’s a badass — she can beat up anybody — but she also has some special powers of sorcery and healing which she got by making a bargain with a hellspawn named Perry. Perry keeps Jill alive and in return she gives him two hours of her “time” each month.

In Night Shift, the first book in Lilith Saintcrow’s JILL KISMET series (reviewed by Robert), we met all the main characters, but you don’t really need to read Night Shift to understand what’s going on in this second book, Hunter’s Prayer. Saintcrow quickly catches up new readers and Jill is dealing with a new threat to the Nightside this time. Teenage prostitutes are being brutally murdered and eviscerated and their internal organs and eyeballs are being harvested. Jill is called in to solve the crime and it’s soon clear that whatever is killing those girls is after Jill, too. Fortunately Jill’s got backup from her sidekick lover, a werecat named Saul, and Perry’s contributions are keeping her alive.

After recently trying and rejecting Lilith Saintcrow’s DANTE VALENTINE series, it’s not surprising that her JILL KISMET series isn’t working for me either. I tried it because it’s recently been released on audio by Brilliance Audio and they sent me copies to review. As with the DANTE VALENTINE series, the audio is excellent. Joyce Bean does the narration and is completely convincing in her male and female roles. If you’re going to read JILL KISMET, definitely try the audio.

As for me, however, I felt the same way about Jill Kismet’s story as I did about Dante Valentine’s. That’s because Jill Kismet and Dante Valentine are essentially the same person; I couldn’t tell them apart. Each woman is, as I said in my reviews of the first two DANTE VALENTINE books, “a bossy hostile foul-mouthed bitch” and “a cold-hearted drama queen.” Both have had hard lives with terrible pasts involving sexual abuse, both work freelance for the cops, both wear leather pants and combat boots, both are only partly human, both have a hot paranormal sidekick and a second guy on the fringe, and both spend a lot of time mourning the loss of a lover and whining about guilt and pain. I disliked both of them. A related issue is Saintcrow’s tendency to allow her heroines to brood, repeating the same angsty thoughts on nearly every page. Similarly, the language tends to be repetitive, which frequent reminders of, for example in Jill Kismet’s case, that the silver charms in her hair are tied with red thread and tinkle when she moves.

Another reason I don’t like JILL KISMET (in case you need any more) is that it’s unrelentingly dark. Gruesome murder scenes are described in detail (including maggots and shreds of muscles and missing eyeballs), people are constantly vomiting and there are buckets of blood, there is constant cursing, Jill is beating people up all the time, there are underage whores and sexual and drug abuse. It is all ugliness with no beauty to offset it. Well, some readers may feel that the sweet relationship between Jill and Saul is enough beauty, but even that is tense and precarious because of Perry. For me, it wasn’t enough.

I have found nothing to enjoy in the JILL KISMET series so far. The heroine’s a bitch, the story is unpleasant and unoriginal, the humor is not funny, the writing lacks beauty. What’s the point?

In recent years, I’ve hesitated to pick up a hard science fiction novel. The quantum physics one must be familiar with to enjoy the novel is so far beyond me that I feel I need a physics course or two as a prerequisite. It’s hard to appreciate a novel when you haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on.

Trust Nancy Kress to write a hard science fiction novella that is so clear, so precise and so well-written that the reader is never left behind. It is no surprise that After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall has been nominated for a Nebula Award this year. It has finely drawn characters (especially Pete, from the future, and Julie, from the present), and is based (at least in the sections set “during the fall”) on solid scientific principals with a touch of imagination — just enough to power the plot.

The novella opens with Pete just beginning what we learn is a Grab: he is transported to the past for only ten minutes, during which he must grab whatever he can and bring it into the future with him. The top priority is young children, unaffected by the radiation that has poisoned his generation and rendered it mostly infertile. Pete, a young teenager, arrives near the ocean, but his delight in the scene is erased when he realizes all that has been destroyed by the Tesslies. The Tesslies, we learn, are entities about which nothing is known except that they reduced humankind to a mere handful of people eking out an existence in the Shell, a habitat the Tesslies provided for them. Pete is able to grab a toddler and a baby and bring them back with him.

In the next few pages, we switch to an omniscient point of view, narrowing in on a plateau in Brazil where bacteria is mutating at the base of the roots of coffee plants. We learn in subsequent chapters that this mutation essentially converts the bacteria to alcohol, destroying the roots, destroying plant life — and the same mutation is inexplicably happening at the same time in disparate corners of the globe.

Then we’re in the present, where Julie is working with the FBI on the kidnapping of the toddler and baby. The mother’s husband was killed in the kidnapping — not by Pete, but by the machinery that allows him to travel in time and space, through which adults may not pass. She is, understandably, hysterical, though her hysteria takes a form that makes it impossible to communicate with her. Julie has been working on a series of kidnappings, mathematically predicting where and when the next one will take place, and this brings her work closer to solving the puzzle.

As the book proceeds, we learn much more about Pete and the small community in which he lives, and the manner in which the adults are trying to preserve the good and obliterate the bad in their young charges. More than that, they are trying to rebuild the human race from a very small population. The group is scientifically oriented; the children do not even understand the religious references and hymns that the oldest member of the group often uses. They keep watch for changes in the world outside their Shell, waiting for the day when it is safe to venture out again. The one factor no one quite understands is the Tesslies. Are they aliens who invaded our world? Are they human creations? It isn’t even known if they are machines or biological organisms. We never do learn quite what their nature is, which is the only fault I find with the novella.

We also learn more about Julie, who, it turns out, is pregnant from an affair she had with the FBI agent with whom she was working. She leaves her full-time project with the FBI and prepares herself for the child she always wanted, but she continues to do independent consulting. More, she continues to work on the algorithms that she was preparing to predict the kidnappings. One of her projects, for a professor seeking to make a name for himself, reveals that big changes are coming to the world — and not for the good.

We learn more about those changes, too. They are not limited to bacterial mutation, but include enormous changes in the behavior of the Earth’s tectonic plates, increased volcanic activity, and other signs that the Earth is becoming hostile to its human infection.

Kress effectively guides the flow of all three of these narrative streams, ultimately bringing them to a confluence that is both frightening and uplifting. Kress’s skill shows in the intricacy of the plotting, the scientific knowledge, and the strong characterization. Although I’ve read only three of the Nebula-nominated novellas so far, I have to think that After the Fall has an excellent chance of claiming the rocket ship.

Tunnel Out of Death

As a consumer of media, I’m usually OK with works that aren’t particularly focused on plot. Some of my favorite books and films are uber-quiet stories where “nothing happens.” Heck, I’m really looking forward to the new Terence Malick film, even though it appears to have the same narrative quality of a screensaver program. Character-driven works, works where the images sweep you away, works where the ideas make up for lack of story — I’ve enjoyed all of them. Unfortunately though, Jamil Nasir’s newest, Tunnel Out of Death, managed to test even my patience for non-story-driven fiction. I think partially because it tries so hard to have a story, at least at the start. If it hadn’t, if it had dispensed with all that, I might have been more open. As it is, though, this was a tough go for me from beginning to end, though it has its moments.

Heath Ransom is an endovoyant private investigator, an empathy who can pick up “neural field leakage” from people and who also can go into a tank trance for a “viewing,” where he can enter etheric worlds and in the words of one of his clients, “talk to spirits.” Ransom himself puts it slightly differently:

Holographic torsion wave interference patterns in the vacuum field constitute the forms of this world, including the forms of what we call matter and consciousness. The matter patterns of the body dissipate after death. Do the consciousness patterns also dissipate? . . . I have no idea whether the people I seemed to talk to were spirits or completely non-personal etheric field fluctuations that my mind invested with humans shapes and voice.

Got it? Luckily, that sort of language doesn’t permeate the novel, but there is enough at the outset to make it off-putting to the point of my questioning if I was even going to continue. It does get better, though that style returns now and then.

While on a case for the aforementioned client, Ransom finds himself facing a strange sort of tunnel/vortex in the etheric world. Entering it eventually leads to his inhabiting the body of a just-killed young man and the beginning of Ransom’s attempts to uncover what appears to be a huge conspiracy involving mutants, self-aware AI, corruption at the highest levels of government, attempts at immortality, and more. All while Ransom is kept constantly on the run in order to stay alive (no real spoiler to say he doesn’t always succeed).

Nasir’s working in serious Philip K. Dick nested-realities territory here and plumbs many of the same themes: reality obviously, religion, AI, death and after-death, identity, paranoia, androids, and so on. The problem is, while Dick’s stories weren’t always stylistic achievements, and sometimes were clunky as hell in terms of plot, they were almost always interesting. Too often though, Tunnel Out of Death failed to reach that minimum level of enjoyment for me.

Beyond the clunky language issues noted above, I never found myself caring much for what happened to Ransom. I’m fine with a main character who doesn’t know if he’s a construct or not, but as a reader, I don’t want to feel he’s a construct also. I want to care about him as a person (it’s the sort of challenge in presenting a character drowning in ennui; you want the reader to feel the character’s deathly boredom without the reader him/herself feeling deathly bored). So while Ransom is always facing deadly peril, and emotional peril as well, I never felt engaged enough to care all that much. Or when he’s supposed to be wholly in love, I never believed it despite being told so, and thus when he’s crushed or elated by that love, it does nothing for me. The nested realities aspect and the repetitive nature of much of the latter part of the novel only exacerbate this lack of engagement.

Meanwhile, the secondary characters are so minor (save one) and/or painted in such small strokes, that they come across as interchangeable plot props. For instance, Ransom ends up having two separate chiefs of security at different points of the novel — you could switch them around and not tell the difference. I’m sure in a day or two I couldn’t tell you which was which. Some characters are even almost literally props, as in a sexbot who I think is supposed to tug a bit (at least in some points) at our emotions but who, to be honest, only left me feeling mostly uncomfortable with that whole aspect of the story. And believe me, I’ve no inherent problem with sex or sexbots in stories — Buffy sexbot anyone? — but this one just didn’t sit well, though I won’t go into details so as to avoid spoilers.

Nasir works hard at the whodunit aspect of the story, and then at the conspiracy aspect of it, but these plots are either dropped nearly completely or get overwhelmed by the reality questions so that they either become too complex for the reader to care or so removed from reality that the reader doesn’t care. In either case, the reader (or at least this reader) doesn’t care.

Really, what seemed to me to be the core of Tunnel Out of Death were those big questions mentioned above — what is reality, what happens to us when we die, what will happen if both humans and computers continue to evolve, and so forth. For a while, the questions were enough, but my attention began to flag because I felt I wasn’t being given anything besides the questions: plot, character, imagery; I needed at least one of those to step forward and lend a hand. Every now and then Nasir would toss me a great moment, such as the description of a small bubble kind of universe in the form of a parking lot (I won’t give away what I liked so much about several visits there), but it just wasn’t enough.

In the end, while I respected Nasir’s willingness to bite off these big questions, and his willingness to really push beyond where most authors would go with them, and then push another time or two or five. But I needed some grounding in character to humanize it, or some grounding in plot to give it some more entertainment value, or some startlement of language or image to poke me more alert. Tunnel Out of Death is an ambitious novel, but one that falls short for me.