A Series of Unfortunate Reviews

It has been a while since I did one of these posts, and as a result, I have a largish backlog of books to mention. This doesn’t even begin to cover everything I read, but hey, it’s a start.

The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 13) wraps up the saga of the unfortunate Baudelaire siblings. Alas, I fear that children worldwide shall be perplexed by the conclusion to this saga, for it is rather existentialist in tone (a word which here means “not going to answer any questions”). But adults may find it challenging and intriguing. You see, it’s been a bit of a lie all along that these books are really solely aimed at kids. In the last book, we discovered that the most fearful thing in the whole series was a giant question mark that rose from the bottom of the ocean, conveniently termed “the Great Unknown.” We saw that the clean lines of division between good guys and bad guys are seldom real, and exist mostly in our minds. There are some revelations: it becomes clearer who Beatrice was, for example. But mostly, what we learn is that all real stories begin and end in in medias res, that there are no tidy endings, and that significant and even unfortunate events are often familiar retreads that have been lived by others: the deaths of parents, most notably. All in all, I still think that this is a far deeper and richer series of books than one might expect to find on the children’s bookshelf, and will long stand as a classic. It’s also probably the single best-written book I will review this time around.

I read Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity because I thought it might help my relatively meager organizational skills. Instead, I found that I already followed all of its advice. Set up appointments to deal with tasks, so that they don’t slip away. Use task lists. Sort email into “now,” “at a fixed time” and “never.” Delegate. It’s all sensible advice, but it also meant that the book wasn’t of great use to me. Oh well.

Brian K. Vaughan has quickly become one of my favorite comics writers. His series Y: The Last Man is a fantastic work of speculative fiction. Pride of Baghdad is a new hardcover with stunning art by Niko Henrichon, a one-off narrating the true story of the zoo lions in the Baghdad Zoo who escaped after the bombings. It is, of course, a commentary on war. Perhaps the most powerful moment is when the lion cub born within the zoo walls first sees a horizon; the wisest moments come courtesy of an ancient river turtle who has watched wars rage across his water and his city for more decades than he can remember, and treats the events with both a sad frustration and a sense of inevitability. And the weakets moment is a highly metaphorical battle near the end with a bear that seems to strain for deeper significance but doesn’t reach it, for me. The book’s story ends somewhat abruptly, but the final pages pull out to place the events of the story in context, and remind us all of how many casualties wars can take.

Scott Turow is best known for Presumed Innocent, of course, and is a staple of the airport paperback racks. On a recent flight, I was casting about for something to read and settled on Ordinary Heroes. Well, this may actually be one of the best novels I have read in recent years. Good enough to make you realize that “pop” is where art is frequently born, because this is really one of the definitive WW2 books, to my mind. It’s fundamentally the story of a journalist son who does not, cannot, will never, understand his parents, who are veterans of the war in Europe. As he researches the mysteries of his late father’s service, he find a memoir, and we are then taken on twin journeys of discovery, that of the son of his father’s psyche and his family’s secrets, and that of the father as he discovers himself amidst the carnage of France. Along the way, there are female French Resistance fighters with pretensions of being a femme fatale, an OSS operative who is half hero and half mad, a general who is both brutal and spiritual, and a host of other characters that stick in the mind. Reading this back to back with the Snicket book was jarring, in a way, because the final paragraph could easily sum up both books:

When our parents talk about their lives, they relay what they think is best, for their sake or ours. And as their children, we hear what we want, believe what we can, and, as time lengthens, pry and judge and question as our needs demand. We understand them in that light. And when we tell our parents’ tales to the world, or even to ourselves, the story is always our own.

With Appaloosa, I think we can nominate Robert B. Parker s the new Hemingway. Yeah, he’s best known for an endless set of detective novels. Yeah, Spenser is mostly clever quips. Yeah, whatever. I can’t think of another writer who embodies that machismo, that sense of warrior nobility, and that spareness of language in the same way. Yet another example of pop that transcends. Appaloosa is the story of two men bound in friendship (Parker’s eternal theme) and the woman that comes between them. So far, not so startling. But that’s not what the book is about. The book is about domestication, about whether a crazy stallion can be or should be brought to heel — and about whether the forces bringing things to this more domestic state are in fact any more civilized than what existed beforehand. The book may come across as misogynistic to some, also in keeping with the Hemingway tradition, but I think I end up seeing the love interest in the book as coincidentally female, rather than emblematic of the gender. She’s a manipulative sheep, someone who must be coddled and protected and who will do just about anything in order to stick close by the strong: a type just as familiar from gangs of schoolyard bullying boys as anywhere else. As usual, the language is spare and muscular; I looked for good bits to excerpt here, but it’s all good.

Is it as brilliant as Understanding Comics was? No, not quite. But almost. And that makes Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels indispensable — not just for comics creators, but for game designers, artists of all stripes, and likely for just about anyone who has an active mind. The pages on facial expressions are worth the price of the book all by themselves. This is a nuts and bolts book in a way that his other two books on comics (UC and Reinventing Comics) weren’t, which means that you won’t feel like your brain has been struck by lightning quite as often, but its careful elucidation of techniques is a goldmine of its own.

The Smoke Thief was pushed on me by my wife. It is sold and marketed as a romance novel oif the “crossover” type with fantasy. But it’s really more of a fantasy novel with a slightly heavier dose of romance, like Shinn, McCaffrey, Rawn, and others like them. The conceit: we’re in the middle of the 18th century, and dragons who can shapeshift to human form have been living among us for centuries. They keep apart from everyone else, and marry only themselves (though the occasional halfbreed with humans does occur), but fewer and fewer have been born with the full array of powers inherent in the species. Then a girl is born who does have those powers when she comes of age — and she runs away to London to be a famous jewel thief. This is where the handy power to turn into smoke comes in handy. But is there more than one smoke thief? And is the head of the dragon clan going to lock her up or persuade her to marry him? Well, it’s a romance novel in that sense, so you can guess what happens. But the path to getting there was rather entertaining.

The Iron Tree draws deeply from the well of Celtic myth and tale, just as Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s other books did (the compelling Bitterbynde Trilogy, starting with The Ill-Made Mute). If you can get used to the flowing high language (carefully crafted to resemble a tale of old as much as possible), then you will be rewarded with a story that looks to cross generations. The very first chapter tells you that the lovers and heroes you will be rooting for throughout the book are destined to perish, but the world created is so full of that sort of thick foggy dense myth that it seems obvious that curses must come true and every murky pond houses asrai and every tree a woodland spirit. If you love the old tales of faerie, the real ones that predate our sanitized elves, this is a great place to come to get a hybrid of modern storytelling with many of the old legends.

We watch Bones every week. We probably started because David Boreanaz was in it, and we liked Angel. Now we watch it because there hasn’t been a show with this sort of amusing romantic tension since, well, maybe Moonlighting. I knew that it was based on a real person, and I knew that she wrote books. But I didn’t realize there was a whole series of them, of which Cross Bones is the latest. Of course, along the way I realize that they have changed virtually everything about the books in the process of translating it to the screen: the supporting cast, the development of the love interest between Bones and her cop partner, the locale… and you know what? In just about every case, the changes are for the better. Yes, TV improved something. The supporting cast in particular is much more interesting. The name of the equivalent of Boreanaz’ character is also different. In any case, what we have here is a solid forensic mystery, but it purports to be something much deeper and more complex, rivaling The DaVinci Code in its Biblical references and long-hidden archaeological secrets, as bones that may or may not be those of Jesus are found, then lost, then found again. It was entertaining, but I don’t know that I will be adding these to the list of detective books I buy regularly. The show, however, stays on the rotation.

1491 is a vivid and highly convincing reappraisal of the civilizations, lives, and cultures of the Americans who roamed the continent (north and south) before Columbus. After you read it, so many incongruities fall neatly into place that you are left wondering how you could ever have fallen for patently stupid depictions of history. For example: passenger pigeons darkened the skies, and you could walk outside, shoot a brace from your doorstep, and likely kill a dozen extra by accident. This is well-documented. But the thought that this was normal New World bounty somehow sticks in our heads, because that is how it is portrayed today — when in fact, it’s clearly a runaway population that has been let loose from the pressures of its normal predator. The book is full of countless examples like this, even down to the analysis of the diets of the Maya, which provide not only balanced meals but are also one of the least soil-damaging forms of agriculture known to man. The history presented is an excellent counterpart to the classic Guns, Germs, and Steel. One of the best books I have read all year.

I picked up Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative because I greatly enjoyed the video of Ken Robinson’s talk at TED. The book was good, offering many anecdotes about how we misteach our kids, forcing them into learning styles and patterns that are not useful, and specifically, ones that stifle their creativity in a variety of fields. But it was perhaps more compelling for its portrait of how quickly the world is changing.

I had enjoyed other books by Christie Golden, so I picked up On Fire’s Wings in an airport. A desert world is a nice change of pace for fantasy, and the tale of an illegitimate daughter of a tribal leader collected from her courtesan mother and brought to live at the palace as a slave girl was compelling. But then it veers off into the broader story of the world threatened by demons from without, and one shocking plot twist right in the middle made much of the book fall apart for me. There’s apparently four more coming; I don’t know that I will check them out.

Cross CSI with fantasy, and this is what you get: Ghosts in the Snow
and Threads of Malice, books about an old castellan, veteran of many wars, who since the death of his wife at a young age has been cursed with the ability to see the ghosts of those who died in untimely and violent ways. He’s also what passes for a forensic specialist in this world of magic, training up a corps of guards who work with him as investigators. The worldbuilding is intriguing, featuring a past wizardly war whose remnants lie everywhere around much like minefields in post-war Europe or Africa. The texture of the world is dark and gritty, and all in all, I’ll likely keep reading these as they come out. Warning: like all books dealing with forensics, there’s a high gross-out factor involved.

Ah, a new Scott Westerfeld book. Yummy. I keep recommending him, and based on my Amazon sales reports, you keep ignoring him. Go read The Last Days, dammit. It’s about a new musical trend in New York City, a young band that gets together and just nails the sound, in large part because the lead singer femme fatale chick is a vampire. It ends with the rock tour to end all rock tours, and along the way features armies of rats, giant worm beasts in subway tunnels, and the smashing of a really nice guitar. It’s a sequel to Peeps, a book which offered up a plausible real-world explanation for vampirism. This one seems like it may put a final period on the story, but I can see more coming from this world if Westerfeld feels like it. And you don’t really need to have read the first one to enjoy it.

Jo Walton’s last book was the World Fantasy Award-winning Tooth and Claw. In it, she presented a classic Regency tale in the Austen mode, except that all the protagonists were dragons. Here she once again dives into history. Farthing is a cautionary tale of an alternate Great Britain that appeased Hitler rather than fight. It’s a book about moral courage, really, and how few people have it. It’s also a classic locked door murder mystery with a lead deetctive much in the mode of the great Brit detectives like Inspector Alleyn or even Frost (substantially less profane and unkempt, however). Highly recommended.

Damn near everyone has read The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by now, and reams have been written about the core concept. Although the book feels somewhat inflated with extra material, the idea is compelling enough that I certainly buy into it, and it features prominently in what I am doing next in terms of game design. If you haven’t read the original article, you certainly don’t have any business trying to do anything on the Internet.

Like countless others, I grew up on the Heinlein juvenile novel. To this day, just thinking about Have Spacesuit, Will Travel makes me smile. So I was pleased to learn that
Variable Star was coming out, a book written by Spider Robinson based off of a recently discovered detailed outline by Heinlein. My core apprehension was, well, that Spider Robinson, whom I knew solely through the highly amusing but limited “Callahan’s Bar” stories, was going to finish it. I mean, could anyone really do justice to this? (I would perhaps have picked John Varley, who in many ways seems to me to capture the core Heinleinian spirit more precisely: witness Red Thunder, which is a Heinlein juvie in every aspect except writing style). Well, the good news is that Robinson mimics the Heinlein voice almost precisely, even down to the quaint 1950’s attitudes towards women (here actually explained, plausibly, as an element fitting into the Future History). The story outline is also clearly Heinleinian, although you suspect that the reason it didn’t see the light of day was because it was cannibalized or too similar to Time for the Stars. There are a few moments that don’t fit (blaming Nehemiah Scudder on 9/11 and George W. Bush is too obviously the insertion of Robinson’s own interests and politics), and the end is somewhat rushed, but all in all, it certainly provides that RAH fix.

Whew. Next time, I won’t let the pile get so big. I skipped over a bunch of books just to list these… On the shelf to be read, by the way, are Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell — the hardback I still haven’t gotten to because it was too damn heavy to lug around; the new Robin Hobb; a Brad Meltzer novel I picked up because his comics work was pretty good; the new John Barnes and Neil Gaiman, and lots more. A perpetual backlog. Ah well.