Dangerous Jam

The Rifter, by Ginn Hale: foreshadowing

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:12:10 GMT

Spoilery for the entire series - seriously. And you really don't want to get spoiled for this if there's any chance whatsoever that you might read it.

I remembered something about book six (The Broken Fortress) and re-read it, and...

...how the hell did Hale do that? I don't think I've ever come across this particular use of foreshadowing before, or at least not the way she did it.

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The Rifter, by Ginn Hale. Conclusion (v. 9-10)

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:16:08 GMT

I completely got my money's worth of enjoyment out of this series. By the time I was approaching book nine, I didn't want it to end. But the ending was very satisfying.

There was one event in particular which was completely surprising, yet meticulously set up over ten books. There was another, also surprising yet completely set up, which caused me to email Buymeaclue a message whose non-spoilery text consisted of "OH MY GOD!!!!! Also, just opened the part where it shifts POVs and OH MY GOD I KNOW WHERE HE IS."

Now I want to read the whole thing over from the beginning. Due to the unusual structure, it will probably feel like an entirely new experience.

You can buy the whole shebang on e-book at a discount ($30 for the equivalent of four books), or in paper. However, the paper editions are in four volumes, and only two are out. You will probably end up with a mutant half-paper, half-e-book set if you attempt the latter.

http://www.blindeyebooks.com/rifter/

I mentioned before that the series reminded me of P. C. Hodgell. By the end, it also reminded me of the Fullmetal Alchemist anime (first series.) In both, nearly all the seemingly unrelated side stories and apparently unimportant minor characters turn out to be integral to the story as a whole. Also the unusual mix of a dark world with a magic system involving some major body horror, with funny moments and a lot of very likable and even idealistic characters who don’t (necessarily) get crushed under the author’s boot.

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These books just kept getting better and better, from an intrigueing but somewhat rough start. I’m sure they will reward re-reading.

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The Rifter, by Ginn Hale, vol. 7 and 8: Enemies and Shadows; The Silent City

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:48:37 GMT

These volumes provide all sorts of climactic, dramatic, startling action, and then a surprisingly relaxed and even sweet and sometimes funny interlude... with DOOM hanging over it.

I like how, especially in these two volumes, people generally behave reasonably and listen when people say they have something important to tell them, and sometimes change their minds when presented with new evidence. There are definitely jerks, bad people, and people being ruthless, self-destructive, and cruel. But there's very little totally random assholery.

I have read way too many recent fantasy novels in which people behave completely irrationally to serve the plot and ensure that the obvious course of action taken by the protagonists won't work. ("Screw your evidence proving that you're not the person who killed my wife and someone else is! I tear it up and drink it like a milkshake, HA HA HA!") I appreciate how Hale often has the logical course of action work, but then new obstacles or unanticipated complications arise.

Everything else is completely and utterly spoilery.

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Enemies and Shadows (The Rifter)

The Silent City (The Rifter)

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I have reached maximum stream-crossing

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:55:29 GMT

For what must be my fifth assignment to write an assessment and treatment plan for a fictional character, I am now diagnosing and treating one of the heroes of my upcoming novel.

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The Rifter, by Ginn Hale (Vol. 5 and 6: The Holy Road, Broken Fortress)

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:04:52 GMT

I finally figured out what this series reminds me of: P. C. Hodgell's Godstalk series. Hodgell has more black comedy and flamboyant worldbuilding, and Hale concentrates much more on weaving a highly intricate story. But both series seem to have evolved from the same roots: bypassing Tolkien's high fantasy tradition in favor of the swords and sorcery of Fritz Lieber, Jack Vance, C. L. Moore, even Robert E. Howard.

It's interesting that while the overall plots and details of the two series have very few points of similarity - the kinship is more one of tone and atmosphere - both have heroes who are avatars of the destructive aspect of a God.

Beyond that, all I can say without spoilers is that this series just gets better and better as it goes along. Book five was particularly packed with holy shit! moments.

Marie, if you're reading this, you would appreciate that the only characters who do stupid things based on sexual desire are reckless, desperate teenagers. The adults generally manage to sensibly resist doing stupid things out of sexual desire, despite extreme temptation. (Homosexuality is banned in large parts of this world.)

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The Holy Road (The Rifter)

Broken Fortress (The Rifter)

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The Rifter, by Ginn Hale. Volumes 3-4: Black Blades, Witches' Blood

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:07:39 GMT

The series continues to be engrossing. Hale uses a very unusual structure which I love and only see occasionally. I don't recall ever seeing anyone else do it with Hale's particular twist. I'll cut for a structural spoiler which is also a moderate plot spoiler - you don't realize what the structure is until the beginning of book two, I think.

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It's so well-done and clever! I love the creeeepy magic system. The supporting characters have gotten a lot more interesting as the book goes on. I like how the villains have comprehensible motives and generally aren't too over-the-top.

My main quibble at this point is that I'd like a little more clarity on some matters, given the sheer complexity of the story; sometimes stuff is mentioned that seems important, in a way implying that I should already know about it, and I have no idea if it was poorly or just very subtly set up.

For instance, ( Read more... )

There are also some odd choices about what to show and what to tell. John gets a job as a magical healer's assistant. At last, he will learn some (creepy and dramatic) magic! I eagerly flip the page...

...and it's several months later and he'd already learned it and is doing it as a matter of course. I wanted to see him do it for the first time!

But, in general, this is pretty awesome. Very immersive. I like that the characters are adults who generally behave like adults (and the teenagers behave like teenagers.) The dark bits are nicely spooky, and the comedy makes me laugh. ("So you let him poison you because you thought it would be easier than breaking up with him?")

There is a great bit that I am pretty sure is a nod to The Stars My Destination.. ( Read more... )

Black Blades (The Rifter)

Witches' Blood (The Rifter)

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The Rifter, by Ginn Hale (The Shattered Gates, Servant of the Crossed Arrows)

Fri, 10 May 2013 20:42:06 GMT

In the killer hook opening to this portal fantasy, John, a gay graduate student, has a problem. He and his mysterious roommate Kyle ran into each other in a bathhouse, and fled in opposite directions. Several weeks later, Kyle still hasn't returned, and the rent is coming up. And while Kyle is extremely strange - he's covered with weird tattoos, carries around swords and knives, always keeps his room locked, and, bizarrely, claims to be a milkman - he has never failed to pay the rent on time, which makes up for all other flaws as far as John is concerned.

While John is trying to figure out what to do, a letter arrives addressed to Kyle - the first Kyle has ever received - with no return address. In a mixture of desperation and pent-up curiosity, John opens it. It contains an ornate gold key, and a sheet of paper reading, "DON'T."

Cut to Kahlil (aka Kyle), who is on a mysterious errand in his own world, carrying a bag containing a talking skeleton and gloomily musing that once he gets back to our world, he will probably get the order to kill John at any moment. When he returns to our world (just in time to pay the rent), we see it through his eyes. Everything is shockingly vibrant, intense, and beautiful... compared to where he's from.

This is one of the most engrossing and fun otherworld fantasies I've read in a while. The worldbuilding is fascinating. Kahlil's world is suffused with a sense of wrongness, but not in the grimdark way where everyone is a rapist sociopath and nobody ever has any fun. It's meticulously detailed - there's a funny scene where John sits in a bath and tries to figure out what the hell the cleaning implements and ointments are for, then finds out when the servants arrive and start cramming tooth powder into his mouth - but faded. The food has little savor, the colors are dimmed, and even the air is thin. Some catastrophe seems to have cast a magical pall over the entire landscape.

While there are horror elements (like the talking skeleton and some very creepy magic), the tone is more like old-school swords and sorcery given a modern gloss than actual horror. It's dark in parts, but playful in others. There's banter and egg-laying weasels. The plot is complex and intriguing. I assume John and Kahlil will eventually have a romance, and that they will be instrumental in restoring life to the world. But in terms of how that will happen, I have no idea. The broad outlines may be clear, but the way in which things have happened has been consistently surprising.

There are some flaws, which have not spoiled my enjoyment. Some of the supporting characters get a lot of page time but very little character development. There are a few points where characters fail to take what seems like the obvious, sensible action, for no particular reason other than that the plot needed them not to. And while parts of the story have a very real feel to them, other parts are paper-thin. In particular, John seems to have sprung out of thin air, with no school responsibilities, no family, no history, and no associates other than the ones who are central to the plot.

Still, like I said: really fun. Without getting too spoilery, I will mention that John's introduction to the world is sufficiently rocky that I initially thought, "Oh, God, this is going to be that cliched crapsack world where every single character is a total asshole and everyone is constantly getting slaughtered for no reason." That turns out to not be the case. Or, at least, so far it hasn't been.

This is an extremely long novel broken into ten parts of about 100 pages each. If you have already read this, please note that I am only on Part 2. Please do not spoil me for anything past that!

The Shattered Gates (The Rifter)

Servants of the Crossed Arrows (The Rifter)

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"We died at a very popular restaurant" and other LA food experiences

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:19:47 GMT

I work out at a YMCA on Sawtelle, at a five-block section of West LA which is full of Asian (mostly Japanese) restaurants and clothing shops and so forth. Some restaurants stay forever, while other spaces have businesses come and go in a constantly shifting rotation.

They now have Seoul Sausage, featuring kalbi sausage, tasting, yes, like kalbi and served with kimchi "slaw," and also (no, I won't try it) kalbi sausage poutine. Also Korean corn silk tea, which is like barley tea but even better: earthy but delicate, with an intense corn flavor, but not sweet.

On Saturdays, after I lift weights, I walk to the Japanese market and buy a cold bottled barley tea and a cooked-to-order okonomiyaki from the vendors outside, with their steel grill to cook the savory pancakes with shredded cabbage and two strips of bacon, topped with two sauces and a handful of dried bonito flakes.

Yesterday I checked out a new ramen restaurant. (That makes six in five blocks.) It had a printed sign posted on a podium outside, which began, "Some time ago, we died at a very popular restaurant in Tokyo." It went on to explain how that restaurant had inspired them to open one in LA.

You may have figured this out already, but I was baffled. I wondered if "to die" was an overly literal translation of some Japanese idiom - perhaps related to the old-fashioned English "to die," meaning, "to have an orgasm."

Then I saw the same sign in the restaurant's window, with a small alteration. In ball-point pen, a carat and the letter "n" had been inserted in the appropriate place over "died."

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Quicksilver, by R. J. Anderson

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:14:50 GMT

This is a very difficult book to review. It's a sequel to Anderson's Ultraviolet, which had some nice twists. Though the cover copy suggests that Quicksilver can be read on its own, it spoils every plot twist in Ultraviolet, starting from the very first page. (I also think it would be pretty difficult to follow without having read Ultraviolet first. In fact, I found some plot points difficult to follow because it had been so long since I had read Ultraviolet.)

They're both good books. But if you have any interest in reading either, start with Ultraviolet and don't even read the premise of Quicksilver - literally everything about it is a spoiler for Ultraviolet.

I am going to do two levels of spoiler cuts. The first level will be spoilery for Ultraviolet, the second for Quicksilver.

( giant Ultraviolet spoilers )

( giant Quicksilver spoilers )

Ultraviolet

Quicksilver

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In case of emergency...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:56:36 GMT

I feel a little weird mentioning this, since it's so ME ME ME. But seeing so many Boston folks checking in made me think of it.

Should anything really big ever go down in LA, assuming I'm not already caught up in it, I will probably get called up to go help out, and so will be offline and incommunicado. Should that be the case, please don't assume I'm dead or call my cell phone; I'll check in eventually or get a message to someone.

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My collection has been published!

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:10:19 GMT

My newest book, A Cup of Smoke: stories and poems, is now available for purchase for $ 4.99, at Amazon here A Cup of Smoke: stories and poems, and in epub format at Smashwords. It contains six short stories, twenty poems, and a rodent zodiac.

In a steampunk Wild West, women with nothing left to lose walk into the desert, and emerge soul-bonded to giant robots...

A pair of bickering angels try to re-create Heaven in a Tokyo subway station...

A woman warrior matches swords and wits with a many-headed demon in mythic India...

These stories and more appear in "A Cup of Smoke." The anthology includes the Rhysling Award-winning poem "Nine Views of the Oracle" and the Rhysling nominee poem "Minotaur Noir."

Contains lesbian gunslingers, prophesying ravens, a martial artist on an interplanetary mission of revenge, three golems, and a one-eyed, hopping sandal.

Two of the short stories and eleven of the poems are original to this collection. The other stories originally appeared in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk I, Strange Horizons, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and Cabinet des Fees. All the short stories have new afterwords by the author.

The lovely cover is by Stephanie Folse. Huge thanks to Cora Anderson and Larry Hammer for doing the surprisingly difficult formatting.

Please feel free to link to, tweet, or otherwise publicize this book.

If you would like to review it, please let me know and I will give you a free copy. I don’t usually read reviews and am so busy right now that I’m almost entirely offline everywhere but my own sites, so please review honestly. I am highly unlikely to ever even see it, and I do not expect everyone to love everything in any collection.

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Reading Wednesdays

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:49:15 GMT

What I've read: Re-reads of "Liavek" and Agatha Christie.

What I didn't finish: Legend, by Marie Lu. YA dystopia, Type A: Moderately Controlling Government, Class Issues, Sorting Hat. (The government controls most things, but not at the level of your love life or shoelaces. The poor are brutally oppressed, and there is a rigged sorting system, in this case based on academic test scores.) This is a reasonably good example of its type. I am completely bored with the type.

What I'm reading now:

Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Bestselling YA contemporary fantasy about a boy whose small Southern town sucks, and then a beautiful magical girl shows up. The first person male narration makes this one a bit different, as does the Southern Gothic atmospheres. A bit. I'm not very far in, though - they've only just met.

Force of Nature (Troubleshooters, Book 11), by Suzanne Brockmann. Jules, the gay FBI agent, juggles his complicated love life while running an investigation of a crime lord; a second romantic/action plot involves the PI and his new hire who got hired by the crime lord and are double agents. Wisecracking, wire-tapping, and cameos by a yappy little rat-dog. I haven't liked Brockmann's most recent books, so it was nice to find an older one I hadn't read yet.

Clinician's Guide to PTSD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach

Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition

What I'm reading next:

Quicksilver, by R. J. Anderson. YA sf that's not a dystopia! Woo-hoo!

DW readers, there is a (not brain-safe, not work-safe) image of another book I mean to read on LJ - it wouldn't post here.

Please comment if you've read any or otherwise have opinions.

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Clinician's Guide to PTSD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach, by Steven Taylor

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:14:12 GMT

Reading for one of my trauma classes. I’m not summarizing the whole thing, just bits I found especially interesting.

Chapter One: Clinical Features of PTSD. Nothing new here.

Chapter Two: Cognitive and Behavioral Features of PTSD.

Amnesia. People rarely have global amnesia for traumatic events (not even knowing it happened or having no memories of any of it), unless they also had a head injury or other physical damage (ETA: or are children, or there were a whole series of similar events, of which only some are remembered. What doesn't happen often: a sober adult has something horrible happen to them, and later does not even recall that it ever happened.) But partial amnesia is extremely common. A typical example is “weapon focus,” in which a person might recall every detail of the gun but nothing about the attacker’s face.

Taylor suggests that this is caused by “attentional narrowing,” which is a common result of extreme arousal. The apparent amnesia is caused by hyperfocus on certain details and total ignoring of others, so the ignored details were never encoded into memory at all. (As opposed to being forgotten or being present but inaccessible.)

My note: be upfront with people about this – they may never be able to recall everything, and that’s okay. Total recall is not necessary to healing.

Guilt. Trauma survivors tend to have a number of incorrect beliefs about the trauma which cause them a lot of pain and suffering. Helping them identify and argue with these beliefs can be very helpful. Great breakdown of common false beliefs on p. 34-35. I’ll just list a few.

- Hindsight bias. “I should have (magically) known the drink was roofied.”

- Justification distortion. “What I did/did not do during the trauma was unjustified.”

- Responsibility distortion. “It was entirely my fault.”

- Wrongdoing distortion. “What I did during the trauma went against my morals and ethics.”

These come about for the following reasons (I only excerpt a few); unraveling them and making them explicit may be very helpful.

- Judging your actions not based on the reality of the situation, but against an ideal or fantasy that didn’t actually exist. “I should have disarmed and kicked the asses of the men who were holding me at gunpoint.”

- Blaming yourself for not acting on ideas you didn’t get until after the fact. “I should have memorized the license plate.”

- Overlooking actual benefits of actual actions. (ie, you got out alive, possibly because of what you actually did.)

- Focusing only on imaginary good outcomes of actions you didn’t take. “If I’d tried to disarm him, I definitely would have succeeded.”

- Not taking into account that when all options are bad, selecting the least bad is a highly moral choice.

- Not taking time and emotional factors into consideration – what you’d do if you had an hour to contemplate it in the peace of your own living room is different from what you do when you have seconds and a gun to your head.

Beliefs about Symptoms

- People with PTSD often think their symptoms mean they’re “going crazy.”

- They tend to interpret emotions or physiological responses as objective truth. “My heart is pounding and I’m frightened, therefore the situation is dangerous.”

- Physical/emotional arousal has become so entwined with negative feelings that they may avoid all arousal, including that caused by exercise or positive feelings. (Anxiety sensitivity.) Interoceptive exposure (inducing arousal in a safe, controlled manner) is good for this.

Clinician's Guide to PTSD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach

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Who wants to see a performance with me?

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:51:17 GMT

Anyone want to go to this with me? I could do any of the three shows.

Pay what you can.
Friday, April 12 @ 7:30pm
Sunday, April 14 @ 3.00 & 7.30pm

Highways Theatre. 1651 18th Street in Santa Monica.

I have volunteered with this group for 17 years. Their shows are ALWAYS worth seeing.

Dark to Light, a drumming and performance piece by the Virginia Avenue Project.

ETA: OK, I'm going Sunday at 3:00. Comment if you'll be there!

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Moon Over Soho and Whispers Underground, by Ben Aaronovitch.

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 21:05:55 GMT

This continues to be my current favorite urban fantasy series - the series which reminds me of why I ever liked urban fantasy.

I can write little about the sequels without spoiling a major plot development at the end of the first. They're both very good, but I liked Whispers Underground better because the mystery (while somewhat incomprehensible) was less obvious, but mostly because of the return of a certain favorite character.

Highly recommended. Highly, highly recommended. Great characterization, great atmosphere, witty and fun, and surprisingly moving in a low-key way.

Start with the first one, Midnight Riot. Though the individual stories stand on their own, they must be read in sequence because of a certain favorite character's plotline.

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Moon Over Soho

Whispers Under Ground

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Roles for babies

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:55:55 GMT

Can you think of any theatrical roles which are or could be played by an actual infant? They don't have to be from actual existing plays, but could include stories which someone might adapt into a play. If the latter, please make them extremely well-known stories, like from mythology or classic literature.

So far I've come up with Baby Jesus, Baby Krishna, Baby Moses, and the Bad Seed. I'm assuming the baby in Punch and Judy would not ever be played by a real baby, given that it gets chucked out a window.

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Fair Coin, by E. C. Myers

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:16:51 GMT

Clever YA sf in the old-school vein of "work through all the implications of a premise."

Teenage Ephraim finds a "magic coin" which can alter reality, and uses it improve his life: make his mom not an alcoholic, make his crush like him, etc. However, each change creates snowballing changes, often of a monkey's paw nature.

Without getting into moderate spoilers for the nature of the premise (revealed about a third of the way in) about all I can say is that yes, it does deal with the moral implications of "make someone like you," but other implications aren't dealt with as well. As a whole, the novel is solid and gripping but not quite inspired; the second half moves away from extrapolation and into action, and the extrapolation was more interesting.

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Fair Coin

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Sanity is banned and the government controls mental illness

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:25:40 GMT

A conversation on Goodreads gave rise to a brilliant idea for a new YA dystopia. Just watch, someone will actually write it some day.

Sane. In a terrifyingly plausible near-future, sanity is banned and the government controls mental illness. Taylor, a 17-year-old privileged Mad with social anxiety, has never imagined that the world could be any other way. Her life is a peaceful routine of attending online school and emailing her Mad boyfriend, the handsome Zack, who has obsessive-compulsive disorder.

But her life changes when she meets the dangerous, sexy Jayden, who is one of the forbidden Sanes. Taylor has always been told that Sanes are dangerous and must be locked up for their own good. But now, with everything she has always believed to be true crumbling around her, will Taylor dare to breach the barriers between Madness and Sanity?

[Totally literal barrier. Everyone is living in Domes with Sane or Mad painted on them in big red letters. The Mad Domes are painted green and white, like Prozac.]

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And All the Stars, by Andrea K. Host

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:39:30 GMT

Come for the apocalypse.
Stay for cupcakes.
Die for love.

Solid, inventive, well-characterized YA science fiction. By “science fiction,” I mean “cool powers and alien invasion,” not “paper-thin dystopia in which the government’s main concern appears to be micro-managing the love triangles of teenagers.”

Madeleine, an aspiring artist, visits Sydney to paint her cousin Tyler’s portrait. Tyler is a famous cross-dressing actor, and probably my favorite character in the book despite his comparatively small part.

Her plans are stymied by an alien invasion. Starry towers rise up from the cities, and dust falls from the sky. Some people are given powers, others strange vulnerabilities, and still yet others are possessed by aliens. Stars shine from Madeleine’s skin, and she gets together with other teenagers to learn to use their powers and try to save the world.

The opening sequence, in which Madeleine tries to escape from a wrecked subway station, gets the book off to a great start. I stalled out for a while in a slow sequence in which the teenagers are interminably holed up in a hotel, but the story picks up enormously after that.

Host has a lot of respect for teenagers, and I liked the unabashedly heroic tone of the story. Rather than taking the apocalypse as an excuse for an orgy of rape and cannibalism, Host’s characters band together, form a community, explore their new relationships, take the time to make plans that make sense, and risk their lives for a cause they believe in. It’s engaging, uplifting, and, by the end, surprisingly moving.

This isn’t a flawless novel. Some events are confusing or poorly set-up, some of the dialogue is clunky, and I read the explanation of the alien invasion three times and I still don’t understand it. Too many characters are introduced in too-quick succession, and I didn’t realize that “Emily” and “Millie” were the same person with a nickname until I got to the cast of characters at the end. The sequence at the end with Gavin was really confusing, too. The book could have used one more rewrite.

However, so could at least half of the professionally edited YA novels I’ve read recently, many of which have glaring continuity errors, nonsensical motivations, ridiculous worldbuilding, unlikable characters, and, often, proofreading errors and poor formatting. In some cases, they are nothing but a string of action sequences strung together by plot holes.

And All the Stars isn’t Code Name Verity. But it’s imaginative, well-thought-out, and heartfelt. I will definitely read more of Host’s books.

Giant spoilers lurk below.

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And All the Stars. Only $4.99!

Host self-publishes because of the glacial pace of traditional publishing, which got one of her novels stuck in review for TEN YEARS.

But there may be other reasons as well, which have nothing to do with the quality of her writing. Again, I'm not saying that she's one of the absolute best YA writers out there. But based on this, she's certainly one of the better ones. And when I say "better ones," I mean "compared to all the YA novels I've been reading that come out from major publishers," not "compared to the slush pile."

Speaking only of American publishing, which is the only publishing I know anything about, I can see why this novel would be a hard sell. It is not set in America, it involves aliens, and the tone and style are different from most YA sf I've read recently. (And there are gay characters, though in the supporting cast.) For a first-time author, those could be insurmountable obstacles.

M. C. A. Hogarth has a thought-provoking article on those issues. Maybe the audience for books about middle-aged female Hispanic space Marines is small. Maybe the audience for psychic Australian teenagers fighting aliens is small. But I'm glad that e-publishing makes it possible now for those books to find their audience.

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Prater Violet, by Christopher Isherwood

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:02:29 GMT

This is one of my favorite books. My uncle gave me a copy when I was in high school, and I have re-read it every couple years, ever since.

Isherwood is better known for Berlin Stories, a semi-autobiographical work on pre-Nazi Germany which became the basis for Cabaret.

Prater Violet is a semi-autobiographical account of the young Isherwood was hired to write the screenplay for a relentlessly fluffy Ruritanian musical comedy, Prater Violet, to be shot in London in 1934.

The director, Friedrich Bergmann, is a Jewish intellectual who has left his family back in Austria. Upon first meeting Isherwood, Bergmann remarks, "I am sure we shall be very happy together. You know, already, I feel absolutely no shame before you. We are like two married men who meet in a whorehouse."

Prater Violet, the novel, is largely a character study of Bergmann, who sees both the tragedy and absurdity of his situation, pouring his energy into a ridiculous comedy while danger looms over his family and the world. It is also, quite genuinely, a hilarious backstage comedy about filmmaking, so the movie within the book and the book itself are perfect reflections of each other. The character sketches are dead-on, and the prose is marvelous.

If that was all the book was, I would have liked it a lot. But it's more than that. I'll put what made me fall in love with it, and makes it endlessly re-readable, behind a cut. It's not a plot twist in any conventional sense, but it did surprise me. I'd love to keep it a surprise, to allow you to discover it for yourself.

Since I know what you're all thinking: nobody in the book dies in the Holocaust, or dies at all. It's surprising more for stylistic and thematic reasons.

( Read more... )

Prater Violet

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The Scholars of Night, by John M. Ford

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:47:34 GMT

A clever (perhaps too clever for its own good), twisty (ditto) post-Cold War thriller by the late, great John Ford. I think this is his only non-sff novel, though it is arguably alternate history and possibly sf of the techno-thriller variety.

It juggles a lot of complex puzzle pieces, action set-pieces, and short, sharp character sketches into a whirlwind of a story concerning double agents, a newly discovered play which may be by Christopher Marlowe or may be a clever hoax, secret codes, war games, theatre, academia, the complications of love, spies in Elizabethan times, spies in Cold War times, and spies in the 1980s.

I had read this before, and recalled enjoying it but not having a clue what was going on, and I forgot the plot immediately upon finishing it. I finished my re-read fifteen minutes ago; I enjoyed it, but I still don't understand much of what happened or why. I can follow the general outlines of people running around, shooting at and betraying each other, and unraveling complex codes and schemes, but neither the details of how they're doing it or the overall reasons why, let alone who's really on which side.

Ford was undoubtedly much smarter than me (I am pretty sure he was much smarter than nearly everyone) and I don't expect to understand all the details and allusions and subtext, or even a lot of the plot, the first time I read any of his books. He tends to leave out a lot of stuff that other writers would put in, necessitating that the readers infer from the signposts he left, in lieu of an actual trail.

But this book depends more on plot than most of his; the characters exist to serve the plot rather than the other way around. It's set up as a mystery, but I didn't understand about two-thirds of the solution.

It's well-written but too subtle to quite work as a mystery/thriller. On the other hand, without Ford's usual depth of character and allusion, it feels a bit lightweight. It's definitely worth reading if you're a Ford completist, and is way more easily obtainable than it used to be, with cheap used paperback copies on Amazon. But it's a distinctly minor work.

Just a few of the many things I didn't understand:

( Read more... )

The Scholars of Night

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Star Crossed, by Elizabeth Bunce

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:55:35 GMT

A refreshingly different YA fantasy: no love triangle - no on-page romance! - and a determinedly non-epic plot.

Teenage street kid and thief Digger is about to deliver some stolen letters when she nearly gets caught by the Green Men, who function as both law enforcement and the anti-magic Inquisition. She manages to get away, but her boyfriend is captured. (He never appears except in flashback, and is presumed dead.)

She runs for her life, and falls in with some helpful teenage aristocrats who either believe her story (fleeing a nunnery) or just feel sorry for her. Next thing she knows, she's impersonating a lady's maid for a sweet aristocrat girl. This leads to her and a bunch of plotting aristocrats getting snowed in by an avalanche. Intrigue follows, all on a very small scale as they're all trapped on a single estate. There was so much sneaking in and out of the same rooms that I started picturing this as a play, with one door closing stage left as, with perfect timing, another opens stage right.

I had mixed feelings about this novel, but Digger's voice is great. She's suspicious, scornful of the "nobs," a compulsive thief, accustomed to living on the edge and bewildered by people being nice to her. Surely they have some ulterior motive!

The plot, which needed to be as clever as the protagonist, is awfully rickety. People consistently help Digger out and tell her extremely important state secrets for no good reason. In a book whose protagonist's main characteristic is self-sufficiency, this was unnecessary and implausible. Digger earns a living by ferreting out secrets; she should have had to ferret out everything, not have several crucial ones just handed to her.

This is doubly implausible given that she's (supposedly) an ordinary girl of gentle birth, fallen on hard times and working as a lady's maid. The maid should not have aristocratic adults confiding secrets in her which they could be executed for, on the basis that she seems intelligent!

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Likable characters, good protagonist, and definitely different from the mainstream, but the plot had big problems.

StarCrossed

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Gone, by Michael Grant

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:11:26 GMT

A sleepy California town is enclosed in a mysterious barrier at the same instant that, pop! Everyone over the age of 14 vanishes. And some kids get psychic powers. (Actually, some got their powers several months before the pop - no word yet on why.) And animals mutate.

Flying rattlesnakes! Talking coyotes! Kids running around with tentacle arms and telekinesis!

This would be utterly and completely up my alley... except for the non-existent characterization.

The characters are either good kids trying to do right, with maybe one or two other traits, like "leadership abilities" or "bulimic," or complete psychopaths, with maybe one or two other traits like "intelligent" or "seductive." Speaking of which, I don't love the stock character of the sociopathic manipulative seductress in general, but it is about 500% more skeevy when she's fourteen.

Cool mutant animals. Cool mutant powers. But, alas, I didn't care about any of it.

I also disliked the disjunct between the flat emotional tone (probably due to the paper-thin characterization) and the amount of horrific stuff happening to children, and by that I mean kids way younger than 14.

Spoiler for child harm.

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Also could have benefited from characters I cared about. And less retro gender roles. Girls run the daycare and infirmary, boys run law enforcement and government.

There are three girls with powers that could be used in a fight. Two are not introduced till near the end, and the third dies on the same page she's introduced. The main boys' powers are very strong telekinesis, super-strength, laser beams, teleportation, monster-type physical alterations accompanied by super-strength, and altering reality. The main girls' powers are healing, sensing how powerful other mutants are, and sensing how awesome the hero is.

I am not kidding about the last one. Astrid, the love interest, has the power to sense how awesome people are. She's not sure what this literally corresponds to, except that it doesn't seem to just be about who has the most bad-ass power. (The latter is a power another girl has.) But she assures the hero that her mutant power has detected that he is objectively the most important person she has ever met.

A really fun premise and some intriguing mysteries, but not enough to make me continue the series.

Gone

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J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:15:50 GMT

Fantastic analysis of how Tolkien constructed the language, world, and characters of Lord of the Rings, with particular attention to word origins and connotations. Easy to read and fascinating.

Excerpt:

Tolkien also thought - and this takes us back to the roots of his invention - that philology could take you back even beyond the ancient texts it studied. He believed that it was possible sometimes to feel one's way back from words as they survived in later periods to concepts which had long since vanished, but which had surely existed, or else the word would not exist. This process was made much more plausible if it was done comparatively (philology only became a science when it became comparative philology). The word 'dwarf' exists in modern English, for instance, but it was originally the same word as modern German Zwerg, and philology can explain exactly how they came to differ, and how they relate to Old Norse dvergr. But if the three different languages have the same word, and if in all of them some fragments survive of belief in a similar race of creatures, is it not legitimate first to 'reconstruct' the word from which all the later ones must derive - it would have been something like *dvairgs - and then the concept that had fitted it? [The asterisk before *dvairgs is the conventional way of indicating that a word has never been recorded, but must (surely) have existed, and there is of course enormous room for error in creating *-words, and *-things.] Still, that is the way Tolkien's mind worked, and many more detailed examples are given later on in this book. But the main point is this. However fanciful Tolkien s creation of Middle-earth was, he did not think that he was entirely making it up. He was 'reconstructing', he was harmonizing contradictions in his source-texts, sometimes he was supplying entirely new concepts (like hobbits), but he was also reaching back to an imaginative world which he believed had once really existed, at least in a collective imagination: and for this he had a very great deal of admittedly scattered evidence.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

Would anyone like to suggest further reading on the subject? I'd especially like to read something that delves into Tolkien and Lewis's war service and how that might have influenced their fiction.

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Obernewtyn, by Isobelle Carmody

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:41:00 GMT

I have often had this book recommended to me as a small classic of YA sf in the subcategories of post-apocalyptic, psychic kids, and Australian. It was written in 1987, when there wasn't quite such a glut of psychic kid and post-apocalyptic YA as accumulated later on. But it was still unimpressive.

As is explained in prologue of infodump, after a nuclear war, mutations and science were banned. Mutants can be executed or exiled if caught.

Teenage Elspeth is a telepathic mutant who can read minds, force people to do her bidding, and communicate with animals. She also has other extremely powerful abilities which are revealed later, when it's convenient for her to be able to unlock doors and kill people with her brain. Despite these abilities, her family has been executed and she is in a precarious position, under threat of death if her talents are discovered. Her brother, a teenage total jerk, has a somewhat higher status for reasons I forget and is not very helpful to her.

She ends up exiled to a prison/lab/boarding house for teenage mutants. There she is forced to slave in the kitchens, while sinister experiments are going on off-page. This section occupies about two-thirds of the book, and it felt like absolutely nothing was going on.

I was mostly bored by the book. Elspeth has very little personality. In fact, the only character with personality is a stray cat. Though a summary of events would make it seem like exciting things are happening, they are often narrated rather than shown, and are so underdeveloped that the sense is that nothing is happening. Dullsville.

Obernewtyn: The Obernewtyn Chronicles 1

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