Book Review: Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery
Reviewing Slattery’s Lost Everything will seem rather convenient in light of Elizabeth Bear’s Clarkesworld post on the doom and gloom nature of SF. How awful of me to love another work that makes us all sad and boo hoo inside! Except Lost Everything isn’t terribly boo hoo, unless the only thing you pay attention to is the central premise: the United States has gone to pot — global collapse, climate change, and civil war, along with the looming threat of an immense, monstrous storm that will supposedly destroy everything. But underneath that dark premise is something that I think the best SF always draws out: the pure wonder of the human condition. The novel follows a diverse cast of characters from different and sometimes opposing backgrounds: Reverend Bauxite and Sunny Jim, who have set off together to retrieve Jim’s son, Aaron, and escape the Big One (a massive, deadly storm weaving in from the west); Sergeant Foote, who has been tasked with hunting down Bauxite and Jim to determine if they’re a threat against the military, and neutralize that threat if necessary; Faisal Jenkins, captain of the Carthage, who wants to ferry people down the river to safety and listens to the river for the day when it will consume him and his ship; and an eclectic mix of secondary characters, from a con artist to a ship’s first and second mates to military men and resistance fighters, all searching for a sense of home, a sense of who they were and who they have become, and a sense of what it means to have lost everything but not the will to find it all again. Lost Everything is about survival, of adapting to dangerous situations and finding a way to still find love, friendship, companionship, trust, and all those things that have helped us form a civilization. It’s about faith, not just in a higher power, but in fellow man. There is something profoundly optimistic about finding these human elements in a time that seems to have no future. We’re conditioned to assume the worst of humanity at the end of days. Our movies tell us that we can’t trust anyone, that any one of them could sell us up the river. But Lost Everything reminds us of the beautiful nature of human interaction: that even in the darkest of times, the best of what makes us human springs forward. Optimism at its finest, and handled by Slattery with simple, but beautiful prose and through a narrative that collapses the past and present to show us who people were and who they have become. Slattery’s narrative structure amplifies this thematic content. Split largely between three spaces — the house, the river, and the highway (iconic spaces in American literature from Twain to Kerouac and so on) — Slattery moves seamlessly between a character’s past and present, doing so in a way that perhaps seems tedious at first, but quickly lifts the veil to reveal the purpose. Each storyline moves towards a similar idea, albeit expressed through a variety of hopes and dreams (finding family here, discovering home there, and so on). The result is a narrative that snakes its way like a river towards an “future” that, as the narrative reminds us, has already happened, and which we’re being shown so we know what kinds of people lived before, and the kinds of people that have been left behind. The structure might jar some readers, but I found it refreshing. Whereas many SF novels follow the now-traditional conventions of plot, Lost Everything evades all of that, perhaps to explore characters in ways traditional writing makes unavailable, or to simply break apart the notion that there is anything like a stable narrative when humanity’s connection to place has been ruptured. Call it postmodern or literary; whatever it is, I found myself hooked not just by the characters, but by these very structural choices. Perhaps these stylistic and narrative choices are why some have compared this novel to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, though it seems to me that the comparison rests primarily on theme. Slattery is not Cormac McCarthy. Nor is he Mark Twain. He is something else entirely — a unique voice in genre who transcends generic tradition entirely, who pulls up the roots of the ancient and the new, plucks them from the tree of knowledge itself and weaves them into twisted creations which never forget that we are dealing with human beings in terrible situations. While Spaceman Blues adapted the Orpheus myth to the landscape of a city beset with conspiratorial sensawunda, Lost Everything draws upon a long history of river novels, river myths, and river tropes to remind us of how humanity adapts to an uncontrollable natural world and a species struggling with its compulsive nature, with its unchecked neuroses. In other words: this is a novel that will haunt me for years to come. Its mark will never go away. For that reason alone, Lost Everything will sit at the top of my list of WISB Award hopefuls. And it will take a herculean effort of literary genius to strip this book of its place as the best novel of the year. If you want to learn more about Brian Francis Slattery, check out his website. You can learn more about the book on this Tor page. You can also check out my old and slightly crappy review of Spaceman Blues here.
Book Review: After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh
Collections of short stories are still the hardest thing for me to review, which invariably means the following review will be flawed both methodologically and stylistically. But perhaps I can move past this by way of the interconnected-ness of the stories in Maureen F. McHugh’s After the Apocalypse. Unlike most collections, McHugh’s stories revolve around the same premise in the same world: something has gone terribly wrong with our world; the nine stories in After the Apocalypse are about those who have survived, or are surviving. That’s essentially what this collection is about: how human beings respond to catastrophe. But, mostly, the collection about survival, without all the exotic images our post-apocalyptic movies show us. There are no grand heroes here, nor an assurance that “things are turning around.” These are stories caught in the middle between the moment of catastrophe, the moment immediately after, and the intermediate moments between “the world as it was” and “the better world to come.” And it’s that focus which makes After the Apocalypse one of the most beautiful literary feats of 2011. Despite following a similar theme, each of McHugh’s stories is distinct in vision and voice, from a young man imprisoned in a city compound infested with zombies in “The Naturalist” to a woman trying to make a living in the wastelands along the U.S. border with Mexico in “Useless Things”; from Chinese women trying to free themselves from indentured labor to Chinese corporations in “Special Economics” to a magazine-style article about a young man who survived a dirty bomb attack, but lost his identity in “The Lost Boy: A Reporter At Large”; from two computer programmings debating whether their AI is trying to communicate in “The Kingdom of the Blind” to the sudden and strange shared desire for travel to France in “Going to France”; from a young woman’s attempts to make something of her life after a failed marriage in “Honeymoon” to a family struggling through the after-effects of a time-dilated disease spread through food in “The Effect of Centrifugal Forces” to, finally, a woman and her young daughter struggling their way north after America’s economy and borders collapse, and also struggling with themselves in “After the Apocalypse.” The variety of perspectives and content produces a palimpsest of narrative; in other words, each story seems to layer on top of the one that proceeded it, turning what in other collections would be a disparate set of worlds viewed through a particular gaze into a set of stories that feel inherently collaborative. What one story cannot do due to the limits of space, the next might. Paul Kincaid has argued that “McHugh’s approach to the apocalypse is oblique, a concern with the personal, the individual or family unit, rather than the devastation that surrounds them” (from Strange Horizons). He’s right. The palimpsest that is McHugh’s collection is perhaps driven by the intense personal nature of her narratives. No story in this collection is about the apocalypse-that-was. We never see the events that led McHugh’s characters to a relatively solitary life along the border (“Useless Things”) or to make a break for the city to make something of herself (“Special Economics”). We only learn about the catastrophes in retrospect, often through the eyes of characters who no more know what happened than any of us can say, with any certainty, what exactly happened on 9/11. Complex events are compressed into single-strain narratives. The effect is wondrous, if not because it’s refreshing to see a different approach to catastrophe/apocalypse, then certainly because McHugh’s stories, by and large, are beautiful. That’s not to suggest that every story in this collection succeeds in what I’ve interpreted as a narratory path. “Honeymoon” leaves something to be desired, though the only reason I can muster is that the story never felt like it belonged in the collection, and, perhaps, in comparison to stories like “Special Economics,” “Useless Things,” or “The Effect of Centrifugal Forces,” it falls short of the mark, both on a personal and narrative level. Similarly, “The Kingdom of the Blind” and “Going to France,” while interesting enough, don’t quite approach the grim personal nature of the other stories in the collection. The personal, I think, is where McHugh shines, as demonstrated by “The Naturalist” (the criminal), “Special Economics” (the exploited), “Useless Things” (the struggling), “The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large” (the broken survivor), “The Effect of Centrifugal Forces” (those who survive the dead or dying), and “After the Apocalypse” (the disconnected). These stories provide a kind of funhouse mirror in which to examine humanity, distorted through a world that just might be. The effect is chilling and humbling, because McHugh shows us how fragile, and yet beautiful and unique, human beings really. After the Apocalypse is a thorough, if not unsettling, journey into the human psyche after catastrophe, at once thrilling, compelling, and disturbing. This collection alone proves that McHugh is a force to be reckoned with in the world of genre, for her simple-but-beautiful prose, evocative imagery, and raw human explorations make After the Apocalypse one of the best works of SF of this decade. You can expect to see this book appear in my WISB Awards in February. If you’d like to learn more about Maureen McHugh, check out her website. You can find more information about After the Apocalypse at Small Beer Press.
Book Review: Walking with the Comrades by Arundhati Roy
There’s something stirring in India. A specter, if you will, of a dark time arisen and a dark time to come. Whether we call it capitalism, corporatism, or new (neo) Imperialism, the fact remains that those most affected by the shifting dynamics of contemporary industrialization will be the disenfranchised and the disinherited. Arundhati Roy’s (The God of Small Things, etc.) Walking with the Comrades waltzes straight into this new Indian world with passion and focus, chronicling her journey into the forests of India where Maoists and the few remaining indigenous people have dug in their heels. Each new day brings her closer to the heart of the movement that has set India’s government on fire, spawning new counter-revolutionary police forces and new regulations and laws to strip people of their land for corporate profit. In the process, she crafts a disturbing narrative of the new Indian state, one which will seem suspiciously familiar to Americans who know a little about the United States’ history with the Native Americans. Walking with the Comrades is a quick read, though by no means an easy one. Roy spends considerable time setting the stage for her walk with the Maoist “revolutionaries” in the forests of India. She provides cogent analyses of the Indian government’s old and new programs for stifling dissent, the language they use, and the results of their activities. Likewise, she explores the history of communism in India, leading us through suppression, violent acts, revolts, and the mindset of the people on the ground — the very comrades with which she walks. Walking with the Comrades, as such, is part of the grand tradition of travel narratives, but it is also an expansion of Roy’s long and distinguished career as a novelist and cultural critic. And it’s the travel narrative aspect which is most compelling. True, Walking with the Comrades is about the political and economic situation in contemporary India, but it also an attempt to put a face on the great “security threat” of India. It’s a clever tactic, because understanding that there are humans behind the mask of terror forces us to think about who we are fighting against, and why they are resisting. In the case of India, the Maoists are fighting a government that wants communism in all its forms destroyed, and the indigenous people protected by Maoists — even if only for political gain — moved off and adapted for industrial society — at the expense of their traditions, native lands, etc. To realize who the Maoists are is to make blind faith to India’s new cultural projects impossible, if not because we care about the Maoists and their goals — most of us in the U.S. likely do not because we have a tendency to be ruthlessly anti-communist here — then at least because we understand why they are doing what they do. Perhaps it’s the optimist in me thinks that maybe reasonable compromise can be found in this cesspool of violence and hatred if only we can see the humanity in everything. Still, some might be willing to dismiss Roy’s work simply because she often provides polemics and doesn’t seem altogether genuine when she concedes points to the opposition; in the case of Walking with the Comrades, Roy occasionally tries to suggest that the Indian government might have a solid rationale for some of their actions, yet the overwhelming majority of the book rips India to shreds, thereby weakening the conciliatory gesture. But to dismiss the book for this reason would be to discount what is clearly a problem that transcends borders and exposes the divisions and strategies utilized by a government bent not on compromises with indigenous people, but the destruction of their way of life. Even if you shrug Roy off as a wacky liberal, the facts point to a disturbing history which does not paint a pretty image for the Indian state. And even if you look at the other side, it’s hard to ignore the words spoken by the people in charge, the projects set in place, the militarization of the police, and the general sense that things are not as they should be. It’s perhaps for that reason that I come out of Roy’s book feeling unable to challenge the anger and disbelief she channels throughout her book, despite wearing my critical thinking cap during the reading process. Roy doesn’t pull many punches when she attacks India’s government and the corporations attached to it, but I found myself wondering why she bothered pulling the ones she did. If her facts are in order — they are — then what the Indian government is doing doesn’t deserve conciliatory gestures, friendly discussion, or calm reasoning. Rather, it seems to me that to fight an extremist state, one must attack it with an extreme position. Roy certainly heads in that direction, and the result is an enormously educational reading experience. When I finished reading, I wondered where we are supposed to go from here. Maybe Roy will cover that in her next book… Walking with the Comrades is one of the most compelling non-fiction books I have read this year, and certainly one worth remembering for years to come. If you’re interested in contemporary Indian history or global capitalism, this is a book to add to your collection. If you want to learn more about the author, check out her Wiki page. You can also find more information about the book on the publisher’s website. The book should be available pretty much anywhere. Read With: Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper (This feature will only be included on reviews of non-fiction books. It’s intended to offer a suggestion or two for SF/F books that might be interesting to read alongside the book being reviewed.)
Book Review: Crack’d Pot Trail by Steven Erikson
Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series took the fantasy world by storm when Gardens of the Moon was published in 1999, leading to a 10-novel epic fantasy series, several additional novels written by Ian Esslemont, and a number of novellas. Earlier this year, Crack’d Pot Trail, a tale of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, hit the shelves, offering a strangely compelling narrative concept in an over-embellished, long-winded package. Using the backdrop of the Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas, Crack’d Pot Trail follows the Nehemothanai and their artist/pilgrim companions as they continue their hunt of the infamous Bauchelain and Korbal Broach (a less-than-reputable pair, to say the least). Stuck traversing the wasteland of the Crack’d Pot Trail with dwindling resources, the artists are pitted against themselves in a feat of narrative prowess: whoever tells the worst tale may become the next meal. The question becomes: Who can play the narrative game with cunning and skill, and who will flounder in a sea of their own artistic deficiencies? Crack’d Pot Trail does two interesting things: It draws upon a rich history of larger narratives told through artists weaving miniature tales. It provides a meant-to-be-humorous, if not disturbing, scenario involving cannibalism and artists. The first of these will become obvious to anyone familiar with Boccaccio’s The Decameron or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (among other stories, new and old). Erikson plays with the narratives-within-a-narrative to examine the nature of the artist as a complex subject — that is that rather than showing a series of people telling stories, Erikson challenges the nature of the story by deconstructing their origins and their tellers. What Crack’d Pot Trail does well lies in its ability to expose the boundaries of authorship, which may interest non-traditional fantasy readers more than those who come to fantasy for an adventure (this may also be specific to the Malazan readership, since Erikson’s work has often been cited as a participant in the nihilistic overthrow of fantasy — whatever that means). Erikson, however, explores these questions in a written style which reads as authentic, but comes off as exceedingly convoluted and linguistically excessive. The result is that much of the book is difficult to read, often at the expense of the narrative (within a narrative). Sentences are bloated to a degree that they often have to be re-read in order to capture details or meanings. Such details could easily have been said with greater strength if Erikson wrote with more concision. For example: Suffice it to say she was the first to set out from the Gates of Nowhere and her manservant Mister Must Ambertroshin, seated on the high bench of the carriage, his face shielded by a broad woven hat, uttered his welcome to the other travelers with a thick-volumed nod, and in this generous instant the conveyance and the old woman presumed within it became an island on wheels round which the others clustered like shrikes and gulls, for as everyone knows, no island truly stays in one place (16). Or: Apto rubbed at his face as if needing to convince himself that this was not a fevered nightmare (as might haunt all professional critics), and I do imagine that, given the option, he would have fled into the wastes at the first opportunity, not that such an opportunity was forthcoming given Steck Marynd and his perpetually cocked crossbow which even now rested lightly on his lap (he’d done with his pacing by this time) (41). Or this paragraph: Is there anything more fraught than family? We do not choose our kin, after all, and even by marriage one finds oneself saddled with a whole gaggle of relations, all gathered to witness the fresh mixing of blood and, if of proper spirit, get appalingly drunk, sufficient to ruin the entire proceedings and to be known thereafter in infamy. For myself, I have always considered this gesture, offered to countless relations on their big day, to be nothing more than protracted revenge, and have of course personally partaken of it many times. Closer to home, as it were, why, every new wife simply adds to the wild, unwieldy clan. The excitement never ends! (150) The problem isn’t that these sentences are meaningless, but that they often distract from the narrative, either because they are exceedingly long (to the point where comprehension becomes difficult) or because they digress into complicated musings about things that, oddly, play little significance in the story. Some digressions are amusing, such as when the narrator criticizes critics, but outside of the dialogue (with exception to when stories are being told), Crack’d Pot Trail is a difficult book to read, without offering the kind of payoff you expect from books with complicated styles (such as one would expect with a Pynchon novel). What should effectively be an exploration of the artist and authorship through the guise of a cannibalistic contest is really a narrative of digressions that seems determined to avoid focus in exchange for abstraction and incompleteness. This is perhaps why I was disappointed with Crack’d Pot Trail. Erikson sets up a story that should be endlessly hilarious and compelling, but the result is a rambling mess which, to me, seemed to go nowhere because so many of the stories told are never completed. Whereas other narratives with similar forms have provided ample room for continued exploration, Erikson’s novel ends without much fanfare or purpose. The main points are easy enough to pick out, but I found myself unwilling to traipse through the prose to make the additional connections that would lend strength to Crack’d Pot Trail‘s narrative (there are interesting connections to make, though). Instead, I got to the end of the book, after two weeks of struggling, without much interest in looking at it again — a feeling I don’t wish to have when reading anything, in part because negative critical reviews are the least entertaining to write (in most cases). Crack’d Pot Trail leaves a lot to be desired. Fans of the Malazan series may love this particular book, yet
Book Review Published: Bricks by Leon Jenner (Strange Horizons)
Good news! I got another book review published. Awesome, right? Go read it and let me know what you think. And if the book sounds interesting to you, go buy it on Amazon or B&N or somewhere else!
Book Review: Down the Mysterly River by Bill Willingham (and Mark Buckingham)
Fantasies for young readers are almost always a joy to read. I’m no sure what it is about such books. Maybe it’s to do with the whimsical style — of which Down the Mysterly River has plenty — or the adventures — ditto. Or maybe there’s something else I haven’t discovered yet. In any case, Willingham’s children’s fantasy, Down the Mysterly River, is an exciting adventure story with a wonderful mixture of fairy tale and detective mystery. Too bad I don’t have kids to read this book to… Expert boy scout Max “the Wolf” wakes up in a forest without any idea how he got there — or any idea where “there” happens to be… Soon Max discovers that this forest is part of a new world, inside of which a group of violent hunters known as the Blue Cutters seek out new lives to trim and prune into their “proper forms.” With his new (mysteriously talking) companions — Banderbrock the warrior badger, Walden the less-than-spectacular-sheriff bear, and McTavish the monstrous cat — Max sets off on a journey to meet a mysterious wizard and discover why he and his companions have been whisked away to such dangerous world. Down the Mysterly River channels a number of interesting genres. The most obvious is fantasy, which is an unavoidable fact both for the reader and for Max, who has to come to grips with the reality of the world around him. The second is the young detective story, which Willingham brings out through Max via a methodical set of steps of detection. These detective elements are interesting, though I have to admit that they sometimes felt forced. That is until you get to the big reveal, which immediately draws into focus Max as a character and the old-time-children’s-story feel he evokes. The same thing can be said about the dialogue, which sometimes seemed too advanced or perfect for a character as young as Max; but once you realize what has been happening throughout the book, you start to understand why Willingham writes dialogue in the way that he does. To be perfectly honesty, young folks are probably not going to notice these issues. With or without the ending, however, the mixture of elements works, in part because it gives Max an enhanced sense of agency in a story that could reduce him to the victim trying to escape an evil that wants to kill him. Having Max attempt to discover “why” things are happening, to put it another way, makes for a story that does more for its reader than provide an extended chase. That said, Willingham’s plot and pacing is expertly crafted. The story moves at a good clip and the twists in the story are sure to amuse or shock readers (there are two major twists or revelations, plus a fair deal of minor ones; the ending, however, will blow your mind). Willingham makes a good effort to introduce the genre mixture and Max’s character traits without damaging the flow of the adventure story; in many respects, he succeeds. One issue I had with the plot’s construction, however, was Willingham’s use of non-central POVs to show things the main characters couldn’t see. These are fairly minor, and are perhaps more common in literature for young readers than I am I aware, but they can pull you out of the suspense. Regardless, the journey of the main characters is rarely disrupted, moving forward with an even dose of revelation and action. Willingham also succeeds at constructing a cast of sympathetic (or terrifying) characters. Max is a clever young boy who refuses to let the situation get the best of him, but also a boy who has a strong sense of morality — he’s easy to sympathize with as a result. Banderbrock is a warrior with a soft heart who serves as a wonderful companion, and the interactions between the badger and McTavish — which translate roughly to an animal kingdom version of “I’m tougher than you” — are amusing. Walden, who is the only actual member of law enforcement in the group (though a bad one), is also lovable as a character, which seems perfect for a bear. And the more you learn about him and watch him try to adopt Max’s detection skills, the more you love him. How can you fault a big, hug-able bear for being a less-than-stellar sheriff? Even the Blue Cutters, who are the story’s villains, are interesting characters — and it’s because of them that I want to see more stories set in this world. They are pure villains, but there is a hint of complexity in Down the Mysterly River that I think Willingham needs to explore — either through additional Max stories or via some other character. There’s a lot left to be told about this world. Overall, Down the Mysterly River is a fantastic book. The characters are amusing, the young detective storyline is compelling, and the fantastic elements are enjoyable and exciting. I had trouble putting this book down, in part because I wanted to know why Max ended up in the world and in part because the mixture of genres and the characters seemed to beckon me through the cover. Hopefully others will feel the same way. If you want to know more about Down the Mysterly River, check out the publisher’s website. You can find the book just about anywhere books are sold (except, perhaps, the Moon).