Saga, Vol. 8: Unafraid to mix space adventure with difficult topics Originally posted at Fantasy Literature It’s been six months since I read Vol 7 of SSaga, Vol. 8: Unafraid to mix space adventure with difficult topics Originally posted at Fantasy Literature It’s been six months since I read Vol 7 of SAGA, and after moving to London last summer we recently popped into Forbidden Planet in Soho, and that store is an absolute treasure trove of SF comics, books, and other fan goodies. There are so many enticing comics on offer there, you could spend your entire salary in one wild shopping spree. When I saw Vol 8 of SAGA with Wild West cover art among the new releases, I knew I had to have it.
SAGA is my favorite comic series, because it is always pushing the envelope in terms of content, themes, gorgeously assured and sometimes shocking artwork, and characters so charming, honest and flawed that you can’t help but cheer for them. If you like intelligent, snarky, sometimes profane space opera with a vast cast of star-crossed lovers, bounty-hunters, humanoid robots, tabloid reporters, terrifying monsters, and oddball creatures all caught up in a galactic war between the technology-based Wings and magic-wielding Horns of Wreath and Landfall, this series is guaranteed to captivate.
In Vol 8, Marko, Alana, Hazel, Prince Robot, and Petrichor find themselves on a remote Wild West planet. The traumatic events on planet Phang are still lingering, and they are in desperate need of an emergency medical procedure (any more details would be a spoiler). Once again writer Vaughan is unafraid to tackle a sensitive subject with the opening panel. And while I thought this time the story sometimes felt like it was purely a vehicle for political debate and hurt the story’s momentum, I applaud his willingness to put his characters in contentious moral situations. It’s a trademark of the entire series, love it or hate it.
While Petrichor encounters some Wild West outlaws, Alana, Marko, and Hazel hitch a ride on a train and meet up a very unexpected new character that quickly bonds with Hazel. In fact, Alana has discovered some surprising new powers that may be connected to this. Finally Alana and Marko reach their destination and the doctor they’ve been seeking. The dialogue sounds like something from a TV talk show debate, but then that’s what Vaughan wants to talk about, so that’s what we get. I thought this part of Vol 8 dragged, as the characters debate the merits of their actions. Likewise, Petrichor and Prince Robot are another odd partnership and have many arguments over gender, war, and politics. I liked the story of Hazel and her new friend Kurti better. There were a number of poignant moments as they innocently discuss the world of adults, and this section will appeal to parents, siblings, and those aspiring to become one. Again, this part is very well-written and didn’t feel as forced as their earlier parts.
In the next chapter, we once again see what The Will has been up to, and he’s not in a good place. Seems that one of the many individuals he’s casually killed during his illustrious freelance bounty hunter career had a loved one who has tracked him down to exact revenge. This person has decided to really torture him by going through his old memories. We get to see some scenes from The Will’s childhood and early days as a bounty hunter with The Stalk. Artist Fiona Staples treats us to the ultra-violent action that the series generally features. I’m sometimes unsure if Vaughan & Staples show gruesome violence for the vicarious thrills, or as a technique to highlight that killing is not clean and anonymous like storm-troopers in Star Wars. Considering that his old sins are now catching up with The Will, I would hazard a guess its’ the latter. Eventually, his tormentor unearths a very valuable secret from his memories, though it’s no secret to readers.
In the final chapter, we rejoin Upsher, the gay tabloid journalist, Ghus the little prairie-dog warrior with a sense of justice, and the innocent young son of Prince Robot, Squire. They have an adventure in the forest, seeking the fearsome Dread Naught, and Ghus and the young robot have some interesting discussions about what situations justify fighting and killing to protect yourself. Vol 8 ends on an upbeat note, quite the opposite of the dark final panels of Vol 7.
Now that the series has reached 48 episodes and eight volumes, it has settled down to a more thoughtful pace, and while I think it does lack the intensity of the first four volumes and over-indulges in overt political themes that didn’t really carry the story forward much, I think Vaughan feels that he’s earned the loyalty of readers enough to be able to explore such themes with less propulsive action and more discourse. Again, I really appreciate that SAGA is not about escapism, its about our messy world, war, injustice, intolerance, innocence and cruelty, and most importantly the decisions we must make each day to get to the next day. That’s what keeps the series relevant and fresh – it’s real and funny and heartbreaking, often in rapid succession. Give it a try if you haven’t yet.
Merged review:
Saga, Vol. 8: Unafraid to mix space adventure with difficult topics Originally posted at Fantasy Literature It’s been six months since I read Vol 7 of SAGA, and after moving to London last summer we recently popped into Forbidden Planet in Soho, and that store is an absolute treasure trove of SF comics, books, and other fan goodies. There are so many enticing comics on offer there, you could spend your entire salary in one wild shopping spree. When I saw Vol 8 of SAGA with Wild West cover art among the new releases, I knew I had to have it.
SAGA is my favorite comic series, because it is always pushing the envelope in terms of content, themes, gorgeously assured and sometimes shocking artwork, and characters so charming, honest and flawed that you can’t help but cheer for them. If you like intelligent, snarky, sometimes profane space opera with a vast cast of star-crossed lovers, bounty-hunters, humanoid robots, tabloid reporters, terrifying monsters, and oddball creatures all caught up in a galactic war between the technology-based Wings and magic-wielding Horns of Wreath and Landfall, this series is guaranteed to captivate.
In Vol 8, Marko, Alana, Hazel, Prince Robot, and Petrichor find themselves on a remote Wild West planet. The traumatic events on planet Phang are still lingering, and they are in desperate need of an emergency medical procedure (any more details would be a spoiler). Once again writer Vaughan is unafraid to tackle a sensitive subject with the opening panel. And while I thought this time the story sometimes felt like it was purely a vehicle for political debate and hurt the story’s momentum, I applaud his willingness to put his characters in contentious moral situations. It’s a trademark of the entire series, love it or hate it.
While Petrichor encounters some Wild West outlaws, Alana, Marko, and Hazel hitch a ride on a train and meet up a very unexpected new character that quickly bonds with Hazel. In fact, Alana has discovered some surprising new powers that may be connected to this. Finally Alana and Marko reach their destination and the doctor they’ve been seeking. The dialogue sounds like something from a TV talk show debate, but then that’s what Vaughan wants to talk about, so that’s what we get. I thought this part of Vol 8 dragged, as the characters debate the merits of their actions. Likewise, Petrichor and Prince Robot are another odd partnership and have many arguments over gender, war, and politics. I liked the story of Hazel and her new friend Kurti better. There were a number of poignant moments as they innocently discuss the world of adults, and this section will appeal to parents, siblings, and those aspiring to become one. Again, this part is very well-written and didn’t feel as forced as their earlier parts.
In the next chapter, we once again see what The Will has been up to, and he’s not in a good place. Seems that one of the many individuals he’s casually killed during his illustrious freelance bounty hunter career had a loved one who has tracked him down to exact revenge. This person has decided to really torture him by going through his old memories. We get to see some scenes from The Will’s childhood and early days as a bounty hunter with The Stalk. Artist Fiona Staples treats us to the ultra-violent action that the series generally features. I’m sometimes unsure if Vaughan & Staples show gruesome violence for the vicarious thrills, or as a technique to highlight that killing is not clean and anonymous like storm-troopers in Star Wars. Considering that his old sins are now catching up with The Will, I would hazard a guess its’ the latter. Eventually, his tormentor unearths a very valuable secret from his memories, though it’s no secret to readers.
In the final chapter, we rejoin Upsher, the gay tabloid journalist, Ghus the little prairie-dog warrior with a sense of justice, and the innocent young son of Prince Robot, Squire. They have an adventure in the forest, seeking the fearsome Dread Naught, and Ghus and the young robot have some interesting discussions about what situations justify fighting and killing to protect yourself. Vol 8 ends on an upbeat note, quite the opposite of the dark final panels of Vol 7.
Now that the series has reached 48 episodes and eight volumes, it has settled down to a more thoughtful pace, and while I think it does lack the intensity of the first four volumes and over-indulges in overt political themes that didn’t really carry the story forward much, I think Vaughan feels that he’s earned the loyalty of readers enough to be able to explore such themes with less propulsive action and more discourse. Again, I really appreciate that SAGA is not about escapism, its about our messy world, war, injustice, intolerance, innocence and cruelty, and most importantly the decisions we must make each day to get to the next day. That’s what keeps the series relevant and fresh – it’s real and funny and heartbreaking, often in rapid succession. Give it a try if you haven’t yet....more
One of the most complex and conflicted writers of SF, a moving and insightful portrait Definitely one of the best SF author biographies I've read, alonOne of the most complex and conflicted writers of SF, a moving and insightful portrait Definitely one of the best SF author biographies I've read, along with "Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick". There's no question that Alice B. Sheldon had a unique upbringing, a searingly bright but restless and troubled artistic passion and intellect, and an incredibly varied and fascinating life. It holds the weight of tragedy, but much artistic integrity and struggle as well. If you have read her stories and then read this, you will both gain great insight and immediately want to revisit them for a more enriching second reading. ...more
Gentle, melancholy, and lyrical post-apocalytic tale, a lesser-known classic Much like George R. Stewart's The Earth Abides (1949), this story of life Gentle, melancholy, and lyrical post-apocalytic tale, a lesser-known classic Much like George R. Stewart's The Earth Abides (1949), this story of life after a global apocalypse is nothing like the brutal struggle to survive of many action-based survival stories. This tale is set quite long in the future, perhaps a millennium later, so the details of the Storm and old Civilization are completely garbled and have morphed into legends and oral traditions, similar to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker (1980), but sans the completely invented vernacular dialect of debased English in which that story is written. Instead, Crowley suffuses his story with quiet, beautiful moments of observation of both nature and the surprisingly peaceful and gentle human remnants of the war in North America, who live quite a spiritual life. It's the story of Rush That Speaks, a young man who grows up wanting to become a saint (more like a wise-man) and explore the world via a spiritual walkabout. He encounters a first an old man living in a tree (who keeps much of the knowledge of the ancient world but disavows being a saint), and then a community called Dr. Boot's List, which is just as strange and mysterious as the name suggests. They live a very different existence from his birthplace, and the people are very secretive about the spiritual transformation they get from receiving a letter from Dr. Boots. Opaque clues are dropped throughout the story as it's told in the first person as a series of recorded interviews with an unidentified person, but the final reveal at the end is profoundly moving, and really makes this book shine with significance. It was included in David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels : An English-Language Selection, 1949-1984 (1985), and is well deserving of that accolade, but I much preferred it to his bloated and quite tedious later World Fantasy Award Winner Little, Big (1981)....more
A Big Let-down to End the Series I have to admit there has been a 3 year gap between me reading the first 6 volumes and this final one. In fact, I esseA Big Let-down to End the Series I have to admit there has been a 3 year gap between me reading the first 6 volumes and this final one. In fact, I essentially forgot about the series as I had moved onto so many other books and audiobooks, and only realized there was a new (and final) volume by accident. I was (and remain) a massive fan of Brian K Vaughan's SAGA series, absolutely brilliant, which is why I gave this series a try. I certainly enjoyed the early volumes, though the story was very disorienting, thanks to the characters and the artwork in particular. But the more complicated the time-travel permutations became, the more I wondered 1) how this storyline can wrap up properly without a deus ex-machina, or 2) would this end with the dreaded "it was all a dream" reveal that has ruined many a book and drama series and pissed off so many fans (I'm looking straight at you LOST).
Now to be fair I personally think time travel and altering the past/present/future is so patently absurd and impossible that I have to just suspend my disbelief to begin with. Having said that, there are many time-travel stories I've enjoyed, such as Time and Again by Jack Finney, Replay by Ken Grimwood, Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore, and The Door to Summer by Robert Heinlein, but those are all books where time-travel is on a very limited scale or even one-way basis. Once an author decides that characters (and storylines) can travel between multiple time-lines and dimensions, altering this, that, and the other in an endless succession of causal loops and paradoxes, the basic absurdity of the concept gets exposed, and the more they try to explain it rationally, the more ridiculous it seems.
That's exactly what this volume felt like. A very earnest effort to have it all make sense, and then the worst cop-out of all at the end. Both left me deeply disappointed....more
Alex + Ada: A romantic fable exploring AI sentience and the human condition I gave this a try as the clean and understated artwork caught my eye and thAlex + Ada: A romantic fable exploring AI sentience and the human condition I gave this a try as the clean and understated artwork caught my eye and the first two volumes were available on Comixology Unlimited. Much like Her, Ex Machina, Westworld, and of course Blade Runner, the story explores what it means to be sentient in the context of a human/AI romance. Alex is given an X5 humanoid female robot by his grandmother who senses his loneliness and unhappiness. His friends are creeped out by the idea of him having a robot companion, as this is often a substitute for human relationships, but Alex is not keen to simply have a glorified sex toy. Rather, he wants her to be more human-like and have agency and the ability to have opinions and make decisions for herself. As the near-future they live in is very distrustful of this, this sets of a series of crises with his friends and the authorities.
I thought the first two-thirds of the story was really well conceived and the issues were explored with humor, pathos, and some very thoughtful discussions of what humans really want from AIs, and what AIs might think of human social rules. However, the third and final volume really drops the ball in terms of dramatic tension as it comes to an abrupt climax in the early going and then skips forward in time to a very understated ending that I found unsatisfying. The story is good in its ideas and characters, but the future society didn't quite right true for him. It seemed far too comfortable and plentiful for a near future world, with no real hint as to how so many of the world's problems had been resolved enough to reach this level of advanced robotics and yet still live in suburban communities and have parties much like today.
All in all, though, I did enjoy its approach to AI romance that refused to trivialize it and presented all the problems that would likely arise. ...more
Paper Girls (Vol 5): Story gaining momentum and richness This is the fifth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and the larger story is really staPaper Girls (Vol 5): Story gaining momentum and richness This is the fifth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and the larger story is really starting to take shape. The early volumes were quite elliptical and disorienting, so it’s great to be able to understand the various storylines and the larger world-building that is revealed, and get to know and like the four main protagonists even more as they are thrown into a series of tense adventures across time.
Finally we get to delve into the far-future world inhabited by the old-timers, with the sleek and beautifully-colored futuristic cityscapes that were just hinted at in previous volumes. The girls find themselves in a far future city that is surprisingly close to home, on a mission to seek out answers and help as they are being pursued by multiple factions, since for some reason the outcome of this time-traveling battle apparently rests on their fates.
The story addresses the familiar time-travel contradictions of how the past and future can be altered when it should already have happened, taking a fresh tack by denying the common quantum explanation for multiple time-lines. It’s an interesting approach, and central to the entire story structure, so it’s good to see that Vaughan is thinking through his story carefully.
We learn much more about the back-stories of Wari and Grandfather, with some surprising reveals, and once again Vaughan refuses to use the simplistic dichotomy of “good” and “bad” for his characters. They each have their own motives to pursue the girls for different ends, and both seem to believe in the justness of their actions. This level of moral complexity is something that distinguishes the entire series. While the reasons for why the old-timers are after the girls is unveiled, its still unclear whether they or their rebellious younger rivals are right or wrong.
The narrative weaves between different groups, times, and adds color to some of the events of the past volumes. Things are certainly easier to follow now, and the plot is really gaining urgency. What is more, the interactions between the girls and their older selves are both funny and moving at times. The artwork by Cliff Chiang remains precise, clean and skillful, and the coloring by Matt Wilson and letter by Jared K. Fletcher are also distinctive and add to the visual feast. It’s a pleasure to read and the full-page panels are always used as dramatic reveals.
Much like Vol 4, I found this volume to be a lot of fun to read and am now eagerly awaiting the next installment....more
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature The Most Shattering Volume to Date It’s been nine months since I read Vol 8 of Saga, and ages since I've had timOriginally posted at Fantasy Literature The Most Shattering Volume to Date It’s been nine months since I read Vol 8 of Saga, and ages since I've had time to write any reviews since moving to London last fall. It’s one of the only comic series that I follow (the other being Vaughan's Paper Girls), and the characters are as vivid, complicated, lovable, despicable, cruel, and conflicted as any I know. This is a space opera that tackles the most difficult and relevant topics of our own society, doesn’t hesitate to shock readers, flip the script, and most frightening of all, doesn’t hold back from killing off major characters that we are deeply invested in. It’s a cruel message, that even the best people trying to just live their lives and maintain their ideals can be snuffed out by those with less scruples, and that those that have used violence in the past can rarely escape the consequences, even after having turned to a peaceful path. This volume will leave you stunned, gutted, and struggling to recover. Not only that, but writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples have said they will be taking an extended hiatus after this volume. It may be a good time to re-read the entire series and consider the first nine volumes as a major story arc that comes to a stunning ending here.
In Vol 9, Marko & Alana, their daughter Hazel, Prince Robot, his son Squire, Petrichor, Ghus, Upsher & Doff, The Will, and Ianthe continue their tense cat & mouse chase. While the “good guys” are taking a breather, Upsher & Doff pitch the idea of sharing Marko & Alana’s story to their tabloid in exchange for a big payout that will let them (possibly) escape from all their pursuers and enemies and just be a “normal” family, one not under the constant threat of death from rival galactic empires that both have an interest in extinguishing them. At the same time, Prince Robot has his own plans on how to achieve happiness for himself, Squire, and Petrichor. This extremely unlikely trio makes for a fascinating family unit, and the whole series is so good at mixing up very different characters and forcing them to face brutally-difficult decisions in the midst of harrowing circumstances. How Vaughan manages to keep the banter clever, humorous, and yet completely honest is an amazing accomplishment. There are no false notes, just a continuously shifting tone as we go from quiet moments of brief happiness to sudden, wrenching, and violent deaths. It’s quite an emotional roller-coaster, so be prepared to be thrown for six and put through the wringer – it’s hard to imagine any fan of the series getting through this volume unscathed, and I was once again so impressed by how Vaughan and Staples use the story panels to create unbearable tension. I use Comixology and have it set so you read each panel without seeing the next, so there were moments in the story when I just didn’t want to move to the next panel, knowing something awful was waiting, but being unable to stop myself. It’s a perfect use of the medium, and the artwork is clean, expressive, and gorgeous as always....more
Falling Free: Enjoyable early novel, but not quite up to Miles Vorkosigan standards I believe this is the first of Bujold's books to win a major SF awaFalling Free: Enjoyable early novel, but not quite up to Miles Vorkosigan standards I believe this is the first of Bujold's books to win a major SF award and bring her name into the spotlight, as most military SF Baen books had not been aiming for major recognition (in my opinion), but it got me started on the Miles Vorkosigan series and it's a bit of a mystery why I never actually read/listened to it till 30 years after publication! Still, better late than never.
As most readers and even fans admit, it's a decent and enjoyable hard SF adventure with a no-nonsense engineer hero, lovable and innocent genetically-altered quaddies with four arms and no legs designed for zero-G work, and an evil corporate villain who exploits them and isn't above trying to get rid of them when the profit margin is not sufficient.
So it sets up some pretty obvious targets for readers to love/hate, and lacks the complex and clever plots and characterization of the later Miles Vorkosigan books, so it mainly suffers from comparison rather than being a bad book by any measure. Still, it is inevitable it will be considered a lesser work along with Ethan of Athos, but it's a high hurdle to compete with Miles.
Still, certainly a decent read and worth your time if you like this kind of story and want to complete your knowledge of the backstory of the Miles Vorkosigan universe....more
Pride and Prejudice for Miles Vorkosigan Fans This one is for the fans. If you've followed the many adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, Ivan Vorpatril, EmpPride and Prejudice for Miles Vorkosigan Fans This one is for the fans. If you've followed the many adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, Ivan Vorpatril, Emperor Gregor, and Ekaterin in Komarr, you'll understand all the intricate character details and background that give this story the proper context to enjoy it. If you just read it on its own, be prepared for a lengthly series of comic romantic mishaps among Miles and his friends. It really doesn't feature any space adventure or substantial political intrigue, and a major subplot involves butter bugs. But it's basically a fun reward to all the fans of Miles who wondered, "Is this manic guy every going to find the right woman for him?"
Well, being Lois McMaster Bujold, she revels in intricate and humorously tangled love stories, but what I find quite annoying about most romances, whether in book or movie form, is that they require the characters to first be attracted to each other, fall in love, and then for no logical reason have a massive misunderstanding and blow-out that occupies the entire middle act and provides dramatic tension before eventually having the characters make up and live happily ever after as the credits roll.
Of course A Civil Campaign is a better story than that, and some of the situations like Miles' dinner party are truly hilarious, but overall I found the story a bit too padded and contrived for my tastes. It is like a buffet of tasty treats that you can overindulge in and get sick of well before its time to head home. So while devoted fans will likely gobble it up, I'd recommend a more modest appetizer first like Shards of Honor or The Warrior's Apprentice first....more
Brothers in Arms: Miles gets seriously schizophrenic...or is it Admiral Naismith?
Now that I've thoroughly immersed in the Miles Vorkosigan Saga, like Brothers in Arms: Miles gets seriously schizophrenic...or is it Admiral Naismith?
Now that I've thoroughly immersed in the Miles Vorkosigan Saga, like other fans I can begin to appreciate all the little character details that Bujold has carefully woven into each of the volumes, and as each of the seemingly small events of previous stories have larger repercussions later on, and previously minor characters take on greater importance and depth. This story takes places directly in the aftermath of the prison camp breakout told in "Borders of Infinity" and explains why the Cetagandans are so upset with Miles.
In Brothers in Arms, the Dendarii Mercenaries flee to Earth for much-needed repairs and recuperation after their latest misadventures. Miles contacts the local Barrayaran Embassy in London to get payment for his fleets expenses and repairs, but soon finds out the Cetagandans are on the hunt for a certain Admiral Naismith, who caused so much trouble to them recently. Never having had both Miles Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith in the same place at the same time has avoided identity complications until this point, but now Miles must play both roles while avoiding Cetagandan assassins, his own Dendarii mercenaries causing trouble Earthside when their credit is found to be no good, and eventually a very sinister plot to undermine both Miles and Naismith long in the planning. The mastermind of this is just as clever as Miles is, and has a serious axe to grind with Miles. Also, his method of getting revenge introduces an intriguing and very conflicted new character to the story, who will take on even greater importance in the next volume Mirror Dance.
This was a very enjoyable entry in the series, especially the difficulties that Miles encounters with his split identity, funding troubles for his fleet, more romantic entanglements, and finally some very intense drama as he encounters his nemesis in a tense finale in the city. Once again Bujold manages to seamlessly combine humor, improbable but madcap plot twists, tense action, but above all characters that you come to care about very much. All rolled into a fun-filled SF romp, but intelligent and above all humane....more
The Gone-Away World: Relentlessly ironic, digressive, and clever Originally posted at Fantasy Literature The Gone-Away World (2008) is a post-apocalyptiThe Gone-Away World: Relentlessly ironic, digressive, and clever Originally posted at Fantasy Literature The Gone-Away World (2008) is a post-apocalyptic comedy/tragedy about our world before and after the Gone-Away Bombs have wiped up out much of humanity and the world we know. It is about Gonzo Lubitsch and his nameless best friend, who work for a special crew that is assigned to put of a fire along the Jorgmond pipeline, which produced the special material “Fox” that can eliminate the Stuff, the matter that is left over after gone-away bombs have removed the information from matter so that it no longer can form coherent form and structure. Stuff takes on the shape of the thoughts of people near it — nightmarish monsters, ill-formed creatures, and “new people.” Nightmares become real, and the world itself is a nightmare of sorts.
And very soon after the story begins, we are wrenched back into Gonzo and his friend’s upbringing and bizarre early years learning kung-fu from Master Wu. The Gone-Away World is a long story that absolutely revels in its digressions and manic humor that relentlessly attacks the insanity of the military weapons mentality and the soul-destroying nature of corporations and conformity. It devotes a lot of time to ninjas and martial arts and military training, the cruel absurdity of war zones and civilian casualties, weird desert nomad tribes, and then the surreal post-apocalyptic communities of Mad Max-like survivors and predators clinging to a precarious survival.
It is also about friendships and identity, as the characters fall into and out of different roles and situations, constantly shifting. Everything is maniacally sarcastic, filled with tragic irony and withering contempt for corporate rapacious greed. There are so many digressions that even the digressions have digressions. The story veers from one situation and tone to another, and then two-thirds of the way in, a shocking turn of the plot turns the entire story on its head and changes our understanding of everything that came before, and the final third of the book is truly different from what came before.
The story flies through some powerful and grim examinations of war, destruction, greed, and societal collapse, and yet retains a dogged insistence on making an ironic and ultra-clever quotable comment on the whole glorious mess. It is self-indulgent and digressive and deeply morally-insistent all at the same time. The relationship of the narrator and Gonzo is a fascinating thing, and changes dramatically and suddenly mid-way through. The book could have used a much tougher editor — it’s like listening to your brilliant friend talking a mile a minute, both exhilarating and exhausting. It reminded me somewhat of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, with its larger-than-life characters, lengthy descriptions and elaborate language and humor.
If you are in the mood for a completely different and bizarre literary SF satire on our world, this may be worth a try. The audiobook is expertly by Kirby Heyborne....more
The Warrior's Apprentice: The first story of Miles Vorkosigan is a rollicking SF adventure It's a cliche and publisher's catchphrase to call anything aThe Warrior's Apprentice: The first story of Miles Vorkosigan is a rollicking SF adventure It's a cliche and publisher's catchphrase to call anything a "rollicking SF adventure", but if any book ever was that, this would be it. Lois McMaster Bujold has quietly and steadily created one of the most popular SF adventure franchises of the past few decades with her stories or Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan in Shards of Honor and Barrayar, but it was The Warrior's Apprentice, her second novel, where she introduced her greatest character and got the whole series going. Given how many SF paperbacks are published and disappear into the ether without a trace, and considering that for all those published books there are dozens of unpublished manuscripts that will never see print, it really is quite impressive what Mrs. Bujold has accomplished with the MILES VORKOSIGAN SAGA.
After all, the ingredients for the story don't sound that special: a young scion from a military aristocratic family has suffered serious physical handicaps due to a chemical weapons attack before he was born, and faces a host of adversity by using just his wits and his skills to motivate (or use) others to get out of an ever-spiralling series of predicaments. Of all the different subgenres of SF, the military one has always been of least interest to me, as the whole culture of discipline, order, obedience, and bravery in action just doesn't get me excited, but Bujold has chosen to explore this corner of space with such effortless skill of characterization and plotting that it's almost a mystery why she didn't choose more challenging subject matter.
After all, what distinguishes this space opera is not just its memorable and extremely likable characters, but also how smoothly it transitions from daily conversations to intense space battles, awkward romances to complex political scheming, and from wry humor to sudden tragedy. Those are the keys to making a series that fans (as opposed to just "readers") want to pick up everything Mrs. Bujold chooses to write about Miles and his fellow characters. She imbues them with depth and complexity, yet keeps them very accessible and believable. I think Miles Vorkosigan is someone we'd all love to meet and get to know, even if we are fairly certain he's several degrees smarter and more strategic than we will ever be. He is a great character and an incredibly fascinating person, one as vivid as anyone you know know in real life, and someone you root for to survive each scrape and make it out the other side in better shape, even when he doesn't get everything he wanted.
So it was with great pleasure that I revisited this book for the first time in about 25 years, having completely forgotten all of the plot details and even the names of the characters. It's a great series to read when you are in your teens, but I found it has a lot to offer for older readers as well, especially when you've experienced unrequited love, setbacks, discrimination, pre-judgement, high expectations given your background, and a series of impossible situations.
There's a difference between writing from the perspective of a young and clever man of 17, and writing about one from the perspective of an adult who has been through all that. There are just so many details that ring true in the characters' inner thoughts and behaviors that makes more believable the implausible escapades of Miles as he inadvertently creates a mercenary fleet through a series of lies and cons and clever stratagems. And there are some very compelling side stories such as his unrequited love for Elena, his relationship with the stoic and disturbed Sargent Bothari, and how he brings onto his side all the other 'strays' that he picks up along the way in this, dare I say it, rollicking SF adventure that is just the beginning of an amazing and award-winning space opera series....more
The Stone Sky: An Earth-shattering finale Originally posted as Fantasy Literature The climactic conclusion to N.K. Jemisin’s THE BROKEN EARTH trilogy, TThe Stone Sky: An Earth-shattering finale Originally posted as Fantasy Literature The climactic conclusion to N.K. Jemisin’s THE BROKEN EARTH trilogy, The Stone Sky (2017), has expectations erupting into the stratosphere since both the previous books, The Fifth Season (2015) and The Obelisk Gate (2016), captured the Hugo Awards for Best SF Novels of 2015 and 2016, and these wins were well deserved. Having just finished it, I think THE BROKEN EARTH trilogy is one of the most intelligent, emotionally-wrenching, and relevant SF epics in the last few decades. So any accolades it gets from fans, reviewers, and fellow authors would be fully justified. If you have not read those books yet, read no further as this review contains some spoilers — instead, go out and read them as soon as you can. I say read, but I listened to the expert audio narration of Robin Miles, whose steady and knowing delivery are so perfectly suited to the characters and second-hand POV structure. She complements the story so well that I consider her a co-creator.
The Stone Sky is the kind of book the illuminates and enriches the story that has come before, and makes you want to go back and read them immediately to immerse yourself in the tale once again and delve further into the subterranean depths and undercurrents that explore the bonds of parent and child, exploitation and abuse of power, and to what lengths people will go to protect their child or fight against such exploitation.
The Stone Sky resumes the story of Essun, seeking her daughter Nassun, who in turn has been kidnapped by Essun’s murderous and intolerant husband. Like her mother, Nassun is a rogga, an untrained orogene who can manipulate the geological and kinetic forces of the earth with devastating effect. For that reason, rogga are viewed as deadly threats by stills (those without such powers) and are frequently killed as soon as they display these abilities or are sent to the Fulcrum where they can be trained and controlled by a strict and cruel regimen of servitude. The alternative is death.
The story is also about Hoa, the mysterious Stone Eater that has formed a close bond with Essun, even as she battles against her body turning slowly to stone due to the events of the previous book’s finale. In the second book we learned some of the back story of the Stone Eaters and their competing factions, but in The Stone Sky Jemisin reveals in very dense and mind-boggling backstory chapters how the world of the Stillness came into being, how the Yumenes Rifting occurred, and what role the secretive and powerful Guardians and Stone Eaters played in this incredibly complex, harsh and engrossing world.
It will literally make your head spin — I had to listen to Chapter 19 several times to get my head around it, but it was worth the effort. As many other readers have noted, the grim post-apocalyptic fantasy feel of the The Fifth Season starts to shift into dense SF mode in The Obelisk Gate to explain the inner workings of orogeny, the silvery currents of magic that course through the world, and the ominous obelisks that float in the sky. In The Stone Sky, all the references to evil Father Earth and his lost child, the Moon, become clear in unexpected fashion and shed much light on why the world of the Stillness is so beset with earthquakes, choking ashes, flame, and other calamities.
Lastly, the story is about Shaffa, the ruthless yet protective Guardian of Nassun, whose agendas for his young ward set the stage for a climactic, earth-shattering confrontation in the final chapters between Nassun and her mother Essun, a powerful and emotional conflict between parent and child with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Just as in the previous books, Jemisin is ingenious in how she overlays the emotional struggles of the characters onto the violent geological landscape of the Stillness, which is anything but. This story is a volcanic journey into the depths of human struggle and oppression, but finally soars in its final act. The Stone Sky, and the entire BROKEN EARTH series, is a fantastic experience and well worth a revisit....more
Saga, Vol 7: Explores painful real-world conflicts via space opera Originally posted in Fantasy Literature I had to wait nine months for Vol 7 of Brian Saga, Vol 7: Explores painful real-world conflicts via space opera Originally posted in Fantasy Literature I had to wait nine months for Vol 7 of Brian Vaughan’s Saga, and about a year for Vol 6, after reading the first 5 volumes back-to-back. Saga is my favorite current comic series (actually, the only one I am following at the moment), and if you haven’t read it then go out and read Vol 1 right now. If you like intelligent, snarky, sometimes profane space opera centered on a pair of star-crossed lovers who have a little girl named Hazel and an amazing supporting cast of bounty-hunters, humanoid robots, reporters, and various others all caught up in a galactic war between Wreath and Landfall, you will not be disappointed.
In Saga Vol 7, the story resumes as Marko and Alana are finally back together and Hazel is growing up quickly. Being from opposite sides of the conflict, they are an affront to both and their mixed child is considered an abomination that could undermine the biases that keep the two sides hating each other. They remain on the run from both sides, allied with a former enemy and a former prisoner who harbors a secret. When their ship runs low on fuel, they find they need to make an emergency stop on a comet called Phang.
Much of the action takes place on this giant rock, “an exotic land of boundless diversity, home to thousands of different tribes, sects, and species…almost all of whom despited each other.” Phang has long been a battleground mainly because of its rich fuel resources, and much of its local populace lives a precarious existence while civil conflict continues. The parallels to certain geopolitical regions in the real world are painfully obvious, down to the stream of refugees produced by the fighting. Saga has never held back from making strong statements about war, racial prejudice, sexual orientations, and uses its violent content in part to push a strong anti-war sentiment, a recurring theme of the series.
As always, the story is carried along with multiple narrative threads, including that of Alana, Marko, Prince Robot, Petrichor, and Izabel on Phang, where they encounter a group of refugees who look like harmless prairie dogs. They are surprisingly innocent but devoutly religious, living in the ruins, and the overlays with images of adults and children living in the rubble of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq are certainly deliberate. After all, most civilians just want to live a decent life and avoid getting killed by either side, right? So why do they always end up caught in the crossfire. Our protagonists end up forming familial bonds with them, and Hazel forms a particularly close friendship with a young prairie dog male named Kurti. They’re just two kids growing up in a hostile and cruel world, but like all children they retain an innocent and accepting view of the world around them.
A separate storyline follows bounty hunter Gwendolyn, a little girl named Sophie rescued from slavery, Lying Cat, and even The Will makes a cameo. They are seeking to make an alliance between elements of both sides, but this storyline is fairly underdeveloped and feels more like a placeholder for events likely to happen in future volumes.
Meanwhile, Marko and the gang have to deal with a ruthless new bounty-hunter named The March, who seems to getting more work since The Will has been on sick leave. And the comet is quickly approaching a very lethal celestial object that is certain to lead to doom unless they find a means of escape…
I flew through the chapters of Vol 7 just as quickly as previous volumes, but as I said in my reviews for Saga Vols 5 & 6, the pace of the story has slowed a bit and the new characters are not quite as fresh and the twists and shocks that were so effective in Vols 1-4 have also lost a bit of their impact. Once again, the series remains very intelligent is not content just to provide escapism. Vaughan clearly cares very much about the often harsh cruelties of the real world and has found a way to explore them in a quirky and action-filled space opera format unlike any other, so I will continue to follow the fates of his characters, and will be moved when not all of them survive. The ending of this volume is quite tragic and fades to black in a way only possible in comics....more
A relentless tale of deceptions, betrayals, rebellion, gender identity, politics, with a royal accountant protagonist Kevin Wei’s review at Fantasy Li A relentless tale of deceptions, betrayals, rebellion, gender identity, politics, with a royal accountant protagonist Kevin Wei’s review at Fantasy Literature covers the themes and merits of this excellent book so eloquently that there isn’t much more I can add, other than to say this book is fiercely intelligent, frequently brutal in the moral dilemmas that its central character Baru Cormorant faces, and the world it depicts is incredibly detailed and complicated, just like our own world. It reminds me in many ways of N.K. Jemisin’s BROKEN EARTH series in its unflinching exploration of serious themes in a fast-paced, original, dark, and gripping narrative, and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit in its treatment of gender identity and societal restrictions on sexuality.
In particular, this book delves deeply into what it means to deceive both others and one’s self in the name of seizing power for revenge. The layers of deceptions, facades, plots, betrayals, identity, control, rebellion, and suppression that infuse the characters and story are byzantine and yet fully controlled by author Seth Dickinson. It’s an oft-repeated cliche, but this does not read like a debut novel. To get a sense of how widely-read Dickinson is, read his FanLit interview with Kevin - fantastic insights that show just how deeply he has thought about these themes and issues, and Kevin’s questions are pure genius.
Overall, this book was both exhilarating and harrowing, and I particularly appreciated that the main character is a royal accountant who understands that both governments and rebellions need funding to survive, and the same goes for the military. It’s a subject that rarely gets detailed treatment in fantasy fiction, but it was very relevant to the story and gave it added realism. In fact, I was hard-pressed to find any magical elements in the story, much more like an alternate world with a fantasy feel to it.
Given the depth and complexity of the story, I think it is probably best read in print rather than audiobook to get the full effect, but narrator Christine Marshall does an excellent job nonetheless. It’s just that it’s harder to stop an audiobook to reflect on a certain passage the way you can with a print copy. If I had more time in my daily life, I would definitely read it in hardcopy. I’ve heard the author is working on a sequel, and it’s a no-brainer that it would go straight to the top of my TBR list....more
The Lathe of Heaven: An early 1970s classic of reality-altering dreams with Taoist undercurrents Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I love Ursula KThe Lathe of Heaven: An early 1970s classic of reality-altering dreams with Taoist undercurrents Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I love Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels from the late 1960s and early 70s. She just couldn’t go wrong during this period. Although The Lathe of Heaven may not be the first book that comes to mind as one of her masterpieces (that honor would likely go to The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or the EARTHSEA TRILOGY), it was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and won the Locus Award in 1972. It’s what I consider one of her smaller books, but still one of her best.
What makes The Lathe of Heaven great is that it can tackle some of the biggest issues of the time — overpopulation, environmental destruction, war, racism, the lost soul of the modern world, exploration of the dreaming mind, alternate realities, and the urge to shape society for the better — all in under 200 pages. I really feel that is a lost art in this day of massive doorstoppers, multi-book mega-series, and self-indulgent info-dumps.
The story is also simple in concept, with a very small cast of characters, so it could easily be a stage play and has been made into a film twice, once as a PBS production in 1980 and later as an A&E Network film in 2002. It centers on George Orr, an unremarkable man who happens to have “effective” dreams which alter reality. Horrified by this, he tries to suppress his dreams with drugs, but runs afoul of the law and is given the choice between therapy or a mental asylum. He chooses therapy, and is assigned Dr. William Haber.
The early parts of the story detail the therapy sessions of George and Dr. Haber. George is a very passive, almost timid man. He doesn’t want to be in this situation, and certainly doesn’t want to be altering reality with his unconscious dreams. Dr. Haber is the polar opposite, a confident, brash, and aggressive man who quickly recognizes the potential to harness George’s dreams to shape reality in the ways he wants.
Although he makes repeated and valid arguments as to why he should utilize this unique ability to do good and improve society and the world, each time he inserts suggestions to George such as “let’s imagine a world without overpopulation, war, pollution, racism, etc.,” the outcomes invariably are not what he expected and include some serious unforeseen side-effects. Notably, with each new iteration, Dr. Haber’s status and career seem to also improve.
The middle portion of The Lathe of Heaven then explores a serious of alternate realities dreamed up by George’s unconscious with prompting from Dr. Haber. The ways in which things go wrong are quite ingenious, and it’s clear that Le Guin does not subscribe to the power fantasy that someone with the means has the right to shape society and reality to their liking without consultation, even with the best of intentions. As the worlds get stranger and more distorted, Dr. Haber hatches an idea that if he can replicate the process on himself, he can cut the reluctant George out of the equation and dream the world himself exactly to his specifications. This forms the climactic final events of the story.
What adds interest to The Lathe of Heaven and places it firmly in the late 60s & early 70s is not just the political issues of the time, but also the underlying elements of Eastern philosophy, specifically the Taoist quotes at the beginnings of chapters from Chuang Tzu, as well as Tao Te Ching, The Book of the Way and Its Virtue by Lao Tzu, along with western philosophers such as H.G. Wells, Victor Hugo, and even Lafcadio Hearn. You can see how well-read Le Guin is and how much Eastern philosophy was gaining prominence and popularity in the West as an alternative to traditional Western philosophy, especially on college campuses and in intellectual circles. This is similar to the profound influence of the I Ching, The Book of Changes, in Philip K. Dick’s dystopian masterpiece of alternate reality, The Man in the High Castle.
Taoist thinking can be found in the character of George. From many perspectives, this protagonist is very frustrating due to his passivity, reluctance to take any action to change the world around him, and instinctual distrust of authoritarian behavior. Whereas some people might seek to harness their powers to shape reality through dreams, George is repelled by this. Taoism is one of those slippery, non-dogmatic philosophies that espouses the pursuit of The Way though natural, uncontrived living. Disciples seek to discard the ills of civilization and material desires and pursue the simple, unadorned joys of a basic agrarian existence. One key concept is called Wu Wei, which is defined as “effortless action,” “non-action,” much as the planets orbit the sun without any effort, just following the natural rhythms of the universe.
So while from a Western perspective George is a spineless man, afraid and reluctant to do anything with his powers of dreaming, from a Taoist perspective he might be a very dedicated individual trying to avoid doing harm to the natural order of the world around him. Of course this becomes an interesting point of debate in the story — if Taoists look to the ancient past of a simple existence as the ideal, does this principle still apply in the dystopian future society of George and Dr. Haber, living in massive towers packed with millions of people living on minimal rations due to overpopulation, a deteriorating environment, wars throughout Europe and the Middle East, and a general spiritual malaise? Faced with such conditions, is it wrong for Dr. Haber to want to change that? And is it right for George to resist any such manipulations? As always, it is the questions that Le Guin raises that are more important than the answers. The Lathe of Heaven is a concise, though-provoking journey into multiple realities and the dreaming unconscious, but is in no way an escape from reality....more
The Ends of the Earth: Luminous, powerful stories of war, exotic locales, and supernatural horror Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Lucius ShepardThe Ends of the Earth: Luminous, powerful stories of war, exotic locales, and supernatural horror Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Lucius Shepard had already created one of the best short story collections in the genre, The Jaguar Hunter, which won the 1988 World Fantasy Award and Locus Award for Best Collection, with “Salvador” winning the Locus Award in 1985 and “R&R” winning the Nebula Award in 1987. His work is steeped in magical realism, supernatural horror, Central America and other exotic locales, and hallucinatory depictions of futuristic warfare. In my opinion, Shepard is one of the best stylists to ever work in the genre. That’s why I can’t help including a writing sample from some stories in The Ends of the Earth — they’re just so good.
It’s always tough to come up with a sophomore effort that lives up to the hype of the original. Fortunately, when you’ve lived as dramatic and eclectic life as Lucius Shepard, working a host of random jobs to support years of exploring obscure corners of the planet, that makes for fertile ground for great, memorable, and frightening stories. I’m always amazed by authors who can come up with fantastic tales just living in a quiet house in the suburbs, where the biggest event is when a squirrel sneaks onto the bird feeder or the neighbors’ dog gets loose.
It’s a testament to the power of the human imagination, but nothing beats having BEEN to Central America and the Carribean, drinking rum at a beach-side shack with the locals late at night, and hanging out with the burned-out expats trying to escape our modern materialist society. And when you actually have the writing skills to craft stories that fascinate, repulse, and entertain, then you’ve got it made. And like The Jaguar Hunter, The Ends of the Earth also won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection in 1992.
“The Ends of the Earth” (1989): This is a classic story that is immediately recognizable as a Shepard story. A successful writer named Ray has a failed affair with a married art gallery owner in New York and decided he needs to flee his life and civilization, and chooses an obscure town called Livingston in Guatemala. Being an author, he is fully aware of the artistic pretentious of seeking to escape to the ends of the earth to find inspiration in his own emotional pain along with the new environment so different from the busy streets of Manhattan.
The bar — Café Pluto — was set in the lee of a rocky point: a thatched hut with a sand floor and picnic-style tables, lit with black lights that emitted an evil purple radiance and made all the gringos glow like sunburned corpses … I was giddy with the dope, with the wildness of the night, the vast blue-dark sky and its trillion watts of stars, silver glitters that appeared to be slipping around like sequins on a dancer’s gown. Behind us the Café Pluto had the look of an eerie cave lit by seams of gleaming purple ore.
There he discovers the expected mixture of disillusioned ex-pats, impoverished locals, and drug-taking bohemian would-be artists. It’s all according to script, until he meets a rather unpleasant Brit named Carl who has set himself up as the top dog in the bohemian community, claiming to be writing an obscure academic work on local folklore and black magic, but supporting himself by selling drugs to other foreigners. Ray takes an instant dislike to Carl, not least because one Carl’s followers is an alluring young French woman named Odille, whom Ray is attracted to and who has her own emotional issues she is fleeing from. The scene is set for a classic love triangle in a tiny Guatemalan village, until one night Ray discovers a set of strange dolls that Carl has acquired from a local shaman. Supposedly they are part of an ancient game that Carl is studying, but he is very reticent to reveal more details, and when they all decide to get high on hashish and play the game, things quickly take a sinister turn…
“Delta Sly Honey” (1987): Here is another Shepard story set in a war setting, this time behind the front lines in Vietnam. Randall J. Williams is a skinny and shy young Southern guy who transforms into the “High Priest of the Soulful Truth and the Holy Ghost of the Sixty-Cycle Hum.” Randall’s job is mainly to handle the bodies of dead soldiers, but one day a lifetime sergeant named Andrew Moon decides to make meek Randall his target of bullying. One day someone using the tag line Delta Sly Honey answers Randall’s broadcast, and he freaks out and goes AWOL. As the narrator investigates, things get more bizarre and horrific…
“Bound for Glory” (1989): This is definitely a strange and memorable tale of a nightmarish train trip to Glory, a town in a post-apocalyptic Wild-West type of landscape where desperation triumphs over hope. The train passes through a strange series of border towns but the biggest danger is when it goes through the Patch, an area where the laws of physics, mysterious fauna, and behavior of the passengers all change unpredictably. Anybody who has read Jeff VanderMeer’s SOUTHERN REACH trilogy will recognize the eerie echoes of that occult sense of dread.
The train guard Roy Cole patrols up and down the train cars, looking into the eyes of each passengers for the telltale signs of madness, and doesn’t hesitate to use his shotgun if he feels it is justified. When the narrator and his female companion Tracy go through the Patch and Tracy starts to transform, he is torn between protecting her from herself and Roy Cole, but he should really be more concerned about the changes that are happening to himself. The ending of the story truly turns things on their head, but you’ll have to read it to find out why.
“The Exercise of Faith” (1987): Here’s a story that doesn’t resemble other Shepard stories I’ve read. The protagonist is a priest that heads a small group of parishioners. But he has an ability not generally available to men of the cloth. The opening paragraph describes it well: From my pulpit, carved of ebony into a long-snouted griffin’s head, I can see the sins of my parishioners. It’s as if a current is flowing from face to face, illuminating the secret meaning of every wrinkle and line and nuance of expression. They — like their sins — are an ordinary lot. Children as fidgety as gnats. Ruddy-cheeked men possessed by the demons of real estate, solid citizens with weak hearts and brutal arguments for wives. Women whose thoughts slide like swaths of gingham through their minds, married every one to lechers and layabouts.
Knowing the innermost thoughts and sinful urges of his flock leads the priest to pursue some very deviant paths and deliver possibly the most perverse sermon of all time. Depending on your temperament, you may find it either hilarious or blasphemous. A very unusual story.
“Nomans Land” (1988): This is the story of several sailors who get caught in vicious storm off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard (which also features in Shepard’s story “How the Wind Spoke at Madaket”) and who find themselves stranded on a tiny deserted island appropriated named “Nomans Land”. The only survivors are Bert Cisneros, a mean-spirited Portuguese man, and the Irish cook Jack Tyrell.
There is little friendship between the two, but they take shelter in an ominous bunker overnight. The next morning, Jack encounters a strange, haunted-seeming woman named Astrid who sees to be living alone on the island, an entomologist studying the ubiquitous tiny white spiders that seem to make their webs in every corner of the island. Jack and Astrid develop a lonely and desperate relationship that suddenly takes a turn to horror (Shepard’s favorite technique), and then goes far beyond, bringing our tenuous understanding of reality into question, as the little white spiders swarm over the island.
“Life of Buddha” (1988): This is the first story in this collection that I just didn’t like. It’s the story of a heroin addict nicknamed Buddha that basically spends much of his time in a drugged-out stupor in a shooting gallery, ostensibly serving as security for his dealer. He has decided to shut out the painful memories of his family by losing himself in drugs, and encounters another lost soul who is also living in the margins and struggling with gender issues. There are some fantasy/horror elements, but I couldn’t care about the characters or the story much.
“Shades” (1987): Here is a return to form for Shepard, as a Vietnamese man named Tom Puleo returns to Vietnam to cover a story about a young soldier named Stoner who died in a village called Cam Le. A Marxist mystic has invented a device that can summon ghosts, and Stoner’s ghost has come back to haunt the village, scaring the residents away and attracting foreign attention. As a fellow soldier with Stoner, the machine inventor wants to see if Stoner’s ghost will respond more to Tom. The story is filled with intense paranormal confrontations between Tom and Stoner’s ghost, and the ending is poignant.
“Aymara” (1986): This was one of my favorite stories of the collection, another seamlessly-crafted take of revolution in Central America and the take of a gringo named Captain Lee Christmas who becomes deeply embroiled in Honduran politics at the turn of the century. The framing narrative is told by a political journalist named William who is fascinated by the story of Christmas and also looking to write a story about a mysterious US military facility and the growing presence of CIA agents around the town. As always, Shepard captures the details of the steamy daily life in the city, and when William begins a torrid love affair with an exotic dark-haired local woman named Ivie. The mystery behind the military facility involves scientists, exotic experiments, revolutionaries, and the two lovers in the middle of it all. The ending is wonderfully enigmatic, a great story.
“A Wooden Tiger” (1988): Another classic Shepard tale of supernatural horror, embittered CIA agents, incarnations of the goddess Kumari, and sordid goings on in Katmandu. An ex-CIA chief named Clement decides to track down the most recent incarnation of the dark goddess Kumari, who regularly inhabits the bodies of young girls who are treated like goddesses until the spirit moves to the next one, at which point they are discarded and shunned. Clement tries to track down a former incarnation, now a mere mortal, and encounters his former mentor D’allesandro, who taught him all the dirty tricks in the book, but who was now gone rogue Lieutenant Kurtz-style. It’s all very murky and intriguing, exactly the type of story Shepard excels in without repeating himself.
“The Black Clay Boy” (1987): This is a short and creepy story set in small-town Ohio, narrated by an old woman named Willa Selkie. She is a recluse, harassed by neighborhood boys with petty pranks. Then she reminisces back to hear early days as a beautiful young woman forced to marry a wealthy older man when she was just 18. Turns out Willa has a very intense libido that cannot be satisfied by her distant and old husband. When he discovers her pleasuring herself, he basically has a heart attack and curses her with his dying breath. She goes on to remarry, but again can’t get no satisfaction, turning to part-time prostitution just to get her fix, eventually setting her sights on a sexually-frustrated Reverend. As we flash back to the present, Willa turns now eyes on her Black Clay Boy, a type of voodoo doll, hoping for one last moment of pleasure…
“Fire Zone Emerald” (1985): Another atmospheric and intense Shepard tale of high-tech soldiers in a Central American war zone, this time in the Guatemalan rain forest. The story begins with Quinn, a soldier injured and separated from his unit after an attack and explosion, finds himself alone in Fire Zone Emerald. He is hardly able to move, and when he gets an unexpected call on his com unit from someone named Mathis of Special Forces who seems sympathetic but may have gone rogue, Quinn is suspicious. The story becomes a cat-and-mouse game as Quinn tries to evade Mathis, with some very tense action sequences. What’s that you say? Where is the trademark dark supernatural element that distinguishes Shepard’s stories? Well, you should discuss that with the queen, who takes the shape of a tiger and can place thoughts in your mind…
“On the Border” (1987): This was one of my favorite stories — a desert-based tale of desperate and marginalized hoodlums who try to rise above their origins, the classic pursuit of a reward for the kidnapping of the beautiful daughter of a rich man, and some magical realism in a surreal brujo in the desert and a bizarre mountain village that may be a total head trip into a psychedelic and violent denouement. It’s a taught tale with a lean and mean James Ellroy feel, but with the empathy of Shepard’s love of outcasts and the glimpses of sublime spiritual mysteries hiding in the sordid corners of our world.
“The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter” (1988): This is one of the longest stories in the collection and is part of Shepard’s ongoing series of fantasy stories about Griaule, the giant dormant dragon who has been trapped by a magician’s spell and has become a part of the local geography, but still exerts a subtle and sinister influence on the human communities that surround it. This story is about Catherine, the daughter of a scalehunter in Hangtown who makes his living chipping away loose scales to sell in the nearby town. She is beautiful, as the title states, but also vain and selfish, toying with the hearts of the young men and stealing them away from their girlfriends just for the malicious fun of it. One day she is resting alone and is assaulting by a village thug, and in the struggle to resist his attempted rape, she accidently kills him with her scaling hook. She is then forced to flee into the dragon’s mouth as his vengeful brothers try to kill her.
Thus begins a very surreal odyssey inside the body of Griaule, which turns out to be inhabited by all sorts of bizarre and disturbing creatures much like something from Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth or Michael Shea’s Nifft the Lean, and more importantly a lost colony of humans called feelies, descended from a pair of retarded villagers many generations past. They have formed a strange and degenerate society that seems to be swayed by the inscrutable and dark influence of Griaule’s thoughts. Catherine is taken into this society and gradually falls into the rhythms of this subterranean world, a prisoner of both the feelies and the dragon’s pervasive presence. Then one day a young scientist enters her world, changing everything.
This is one of those tales with metaphorical overtones that dares you to interpret both the situation and events and discover the hidden themes and messages. However, much like his award-winning story “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule,” while the story is fraught with meaning, the exact interpretation of what the dragon represents is elusive and will vary from reader to reader. Is the dragon a dormant god, exerting a sinister influence on human affairs for his own unknowable reasons, or an embodiment of a more subtle evil that is not divine in nature? Themes of free will, self-determination, and imprisonment are also explored, and the will to adapt to captivity. Guilt, revenge, love, escape, freedom, and good/evil; it’s all there in a fairytale format that also reminded me of Ursula K. LeGuin’s short stories.
“Surrender” (1989): The final story is a confluence of all Shepard’s favorite elements: a dismal Central American military conflict, corrupt militia groups involved in nefarious scientific experiments, jaded journalists who discover things are even more screwed-up than their cynical outlooks were prepared to handle, and dark gun battles against subhuman creatures in dark and dangerous jungles and caves. The narrator gives the story its sarcastic attitude and challenges the reader to have an opinion of the endless miseries of US involvement in Central American wars and state-building, its failures and hypocrisy, and what we think of it while kicking back with a cold one from the comfort of our sofas in front of the TV watching ABC news and Monday Night Football....more
Four Ways to Forgiveness: Slavery, oppression, revolution, and redemption Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Ursula K. Le Guin is hardly afraid to Four Ways to Forgiveness: Slavery, oppression, revolution, and redemption Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Ursula K. Le Guin is hardly afraid to tackle difficult topics. In fact, she delves into them with a fearless but controlled approach that forces us to look at painful subjects we may prefer not to. This time she is going straight for the jugular, exploring the sensitive subjects of freedom, slavery, oppression, sexual politics, and revolution. In the wrong hands this could easily become a heavy-handed polemic that might be unreadable.
However, Le Guin is far too skilled a writer to wield a cudgel — instead, she uses her scalpel to peel away layer after layer of ingrained societal norms as she explores just how human societies are affected by these topics, and leaving no side free of sin but shows how even the slavers victimize themselves as they indoctrinate their own children into the system. There are no purely evil people in her stories, but much cruel and unthinking behavior.
As with her other Hainish stories, in Four Ways to Forgiveness she uses the Envoys of the advanced space-faring Ekumen as the neutral observers of the more primitive native societies, determined to not take sides but forced to by circumstances. In these stories Envoys get kidnapped, tortured, and otherwise dragged into messy situations. In the end, we see just how cruel, damaging, and irrational slavery is, symbolized by reversing the usual pattern of our world with darker-skinned people enslaving lighter-skinned people.
Four Ways to Forgiveness introduces a pair of worlds named Werel and Yeowe. Werel was first to be populated by the Hainish in antiquity, and many generations later when the Hainish come back in contact, they discover that the Werelians have a firmly entrenched system of slavery. In fact, the shock of encountering these space-faring “aliens” prompts the Werelians to colonize the planet of Yeowe using an-all male population of slaves (which they label “assets”).
Though later female slaves are sent to join them, they have already developed an extremely masculine hierarchical and homosexual society, and the women are placed at the bottom of it. What is both surprising and upsetting is that even after the light-skinned Yeowe slaves stage a successful revolution, the women still find that their status of subservience does not change as much as hoped.
There are a lot of unpleasant and brutal scenes in Four Ways to Forgiveness — Le Guin really forces the reader to face the ugliness of societies built around oppression and abuse those unable to defend themselves. In the case of slaves, both men and women are abused and treated inhumanly, whereas among both slaves and slavers, women are victimized by men. The cycle of oppression leaves its psychological scars deep in people’s minds for generations. Approaching the issue from numerous angles, we see how it affects every individual in the story.
Eventually, each story comes to some form of resolution or rapprochement, and oftentimes individuals of very different backgrounds come to understand and even love others. While this can be properly labeled “understanding” or “empathizing,” I was a bit hard-put to identify “forgiveness” in an overt form in some cases. That would imply a victim forgiving a victimizer, I would think, and that didn’t seem to always be the case. Perhaps other readers can interpret the book’s title better than I can.
Of note, there is another story set in the same world of Werel and Yeowe called “Old Music and the Slave Women,” which fits very much into the same framework of the other stories and belongs together with them. It can be found in The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin, along with three of the stories from Four Ways to Forgiveness, “Forgiveness Day,” “A Man of the People,” and “A Woman’s Liberation.” The first story, “Betrayals”, can be found in The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin.
I listened to the audiobook versions of both available from Recorded Books, with The Found and the Lost narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan and Jefferson Mays, and The Unreal and the Real narrated by Tandy Cronyn. All do an excellent job as Le Guin’s stories are perfectly suited for reading aloud. The narrators’ voices are strong, direct, and passionate, and the characters and dialogue take center stage, reflecting Le Guin’s love of story-telling and poetry....more
Painfully Dull Care Bears Sleepover In Space This book has plenty of fans who are tired of dark, dystopian SF and are happy to finally have a nice, warPainfully Dull Care Bears Sleepover In Space This book has plenty of fans who are tired of dark, dystopian SF and are happy to finally have a nice, warm, fuzzy story about characters from a variety of different species (that's code for "multi-cultural", if you managed to not notice the hammer coming down on your head repeatedly) who care about each other, solve problems through discussion and peaceful means, and learn to appreciate each others differences. I love stories about strange alien species, and I live in the incredibly multicultural city of London and love that aspect, but this touchy-feely book just didn’t work for me at all.
I know that many dedicated SF fans are tired of the increasingly dark tone of both the genre and the real world out there that we are probably reading to escape for a while, but this story was so utterly conflict- and tension-free and the characters' dialogue so dreadfully feel-good that I wanted to stick a fork in my eye at times (well, not really, but you get the idea). Every note it struck grated on my nerves, because I'll own up that I do think our world is getting darker and more corrupt with an ever widening gap between the self-interested haves and under-educated and disadvantaged have-nots. So while I do seek escapism to stop my mind from dwelling on the never-ending horror of the US run by a megalomaniac imbecile with an orange face, this book was so saccharine sweet it made me nauseous. The solution to a dark and sinister world is not a phony Care Bears Sleepover In Space (to paraphrase so great comments by other reviewers).
Having just read much of the Miles Vorkosigan series this year, I can confidently state that if you want intelligent, exciting, well-plotted space adventure with both humor and pathos, skip books like Long Dull Way to Nowhere and read something by Lois McMaster Bujold, who can write three-dimensional, lovable and complex characters that have more at stake than salving hurt feelings....more
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