Time is in short supply today - this whole week, even, because I'm filling in for an absentee tutor - so I can't stop to talk for long. Sorry! But I did want to direct your precious attention to the most recent of my reviews to be published on Tor.com.
It's of Last Days by Adam Nevill, and in short, if you're even a passing fan of the horror genre, you really should read this book.
Excepting the "divisive denouement" I mention in the quote reproduced below, I truly did adore The Ritual, and if Last Days isn't quite its equal, then it comes close enough to warrant a good, long look. It's a book about the making of a documentary movie about a creepy cult, and though its middle section sags somewhat, it begins brilliantly, and it ends reasonably well as well. Which is more than you can say for the vast majority of horror novels.
Luckily for all involved, this isn't the moment for me to go off on one about that topic — again!
There's just time for me to share the first few paragraphs of my full review, and say adieu:
"Adam Nevill has gone from strength to strength in the years since he invited us all to dine with the dead in his promisingly ominous horror fiction debut, Banquet for the Damned. Its successor, Apartment 16, gave no signs of a sophomore slump, and despite a divisive denouement, The Ritual stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the very best novels of the genre in recent recall. Now, like creepy clockwork, Nevill’s come a-calling again, and Last Days is his unholy offering.
"Interestingly, it purports to be a documentary clothed in prose — a narration of a found-footage film in the making, which is itself an elaboration of events that have been the subject of myriad other books and movies, in the fiction if not in fact: namely the last days of the Temple of the Last Days, an infamous suicide cult known to have met with a particularly grisly end in the mid-seventies. Unless I’m very much mistaken, this is Nevill’s longest novel to date, and perhaps it suffers somewhat for that in a lacking middle act and a conclusion that cannot quite bear the weight of all that goes before it, but by and large, Last Days makes for a vile and grimy ghost story, as gripping as it is ghastly."
Please do click on through to read the rest of my review of Last Days by Adam Nevill.
(Adam Nevill, who was lovely enough to namecheck The Speculative Scotsman in the acknowledgements — a first for me, as far as I'm aware. Thank you in turn, good sir!)
And then? Well... I do believe I've already advised you to buy this book. Overall, it's excellent. Not to mention the fact that it was exactly what I needed after an accidental string of science fiction.
A couple of caveats to bear in mind before we start. Unless otherwise indicated, none of the quotes quoted in the following post are representative of the beliefs of the person in question quoted nor those of the person quoting the person in question. Additionally, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
In short, Quoth the Scotsman is just a space here on TSS for me to post neat quotes as and when I come across them. Simple. As. That.
***
I'm a country mouse, I suppose.
(As opposed to a city mouse, I mean.)
I certainly haven't lived long-term in a city, though oddly - or perhaps not - I've holidayed in a great many, across the UK, Europe and North America. Most always, I've enjoyed the experience. Sometimes, I've even wished I could stay a little longer. But I've never wanted that to be the new norm. To be able to come home, to the peace and the quiet, to the flora and the fauna, to the sizable apartment I can only afford because frankly, it's a bit out there... that means the world to me.
Maybe it's indoctrination. Maybe I'm a country mouse in my old age because that's the way and the where I was raised. Truth be told, I don't know, but it's perfectly possible. There are certain perks to a life in the cityside that I'm desperately envious of, mostly involving food: namely the nearness of vegetarian restaurants and takeaways.
But I bet you city mice feel the exact same way: that you wouldn't trade your day-to-day for anything... though perhaps there are a few things you wish you could change? A few sacrifices that must, alas, be made.
Apropos of which, last week I was reading The City's Son by Tom Pollock, and quite aside from its awesome monsters and pretty prose, a short section specifically struck me.
The following excerpt, then, forms part of one of the most convincing arguments I've heard in favour of city living.
"Our memories are like a city: we tear some structures down, and we use rubble of the old to raise up new ones. Some memories are bright glass, blindingly beautiful when they catch the sun, but then there are the darker days, when they reflect only the crumbling walls of their derelict neighbours. Some memories are buried under years of patient construction; their echoing halls may never again be seen or walked down, but still they are the foundations for everything that stands above them.
"Glas told me once that that's what people are, mostly: memories, the memories in their own heads, and the memories of them in other people's. And if memories are like a city, and we are our memories, then we are like cities too. I've always taken comfort in that." (p.276)
Isn't that a lovely idea? And I would wager there's some real truth to it, too.
Tom Pollock's tremendous debut is still a fair ways off from its publication date, I'm afraid. You won't be able to buy it in the UK until August, or September in the States, so I'm going to hold off on posting my full review till it's rather more relevant.
But do stayed tuned. I assure you, The City's Son will be worth the wait. Plus, I'll be blogging about the book at least once more in advance of my review and its release ...
Once, one hundred moons rose every evening with Mother Night across the Eternal Sky. Once, there were one hundred sons and grandsons of the Great Haghan who ruled the steppes from one edge of the world to the other. Now, the flame of civil war is burning, and Temur's iron moon is one of only a handful remaining in the Eternal Sky.
Temur is walking away from a battlefield where he was left for dead. All around lie the fallen armies of his cousin and his brother, who fought each other to rule the Khaganate. Temur is now the legitimate heir by blood to his grandfather's throne, but he is not the strongest. Going into exile is the only way to survive his ruthless cousin.
Once-Princess Samarkar is climbing the thousand steps of the Citadel of the Wizards of Tsarepheth. She was heir to the Rasan Empire until her father got a son on a new wife. Then she was sent to be the wife of a Prince in Song, but that marriage ended in battle and blood. Now she has renounced her worldly power to seek the magical power of the wizards.
These two will come together to stand against the hidden cult that has so carefully brought all the empires of the Celadon Highway to strife and civil war through guile and deceit and sorcerous power.
***
"For a few hours, as he rode the bay and led the rose-grey into wooded glades now, he allowed himself to dream that he would rescue Edene and make her his wife and that they would live to an untroubled old age with all their children and her cousins and her cousins' children.
"It was a fantasy and he knew it. But he was soldier enough to know that such fantasies were all that carried men through the supposed glory of war." (p.91)
So muses Temur, not the sole survivor but one of a very few to live through a bloody battle between brothers at the outset of the latest novel by two-time Hugo award-winning author Elizabeth Bear.
But it's not always so easy to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, is it? Between memory and invention, I mean. To differentiate what we have ourselves experienced from what we have only imagined. It sounds simple, sure enough, but bear in mind that the mind is a minefield of deceiving appearances, of fanciful facts and factual fantasy.
At times, Range of Ghosts is a lot like that.
Let me explain what I'm bumbling on about.
I have a few folks out in South Africa: grandparents and aunts and an almost-uncle, all on my mother's side. The first time your Scotsman went abroad, in the literal rather than the literary sense, it was to meet this extension of my immediate family. The year after that - I must have been about 14 by this point - I went back to Johannesburg on my lonesome ownsome. It was that or bible camp. That said, I'd had an awesome time with my aunt and almost-uncle before, and methinks more of a good thing is good.
That summer was a formative one for me in many senses. That summer I started reading Dan Simmons, China Mieville and Arthur C. Clarke. That summer I learned, at length, about nanotechnology, genetically engineered supersoldiers and the trouble with faster-than-light travel. My almost-uncle was a complete geek, but a genuinely good guy - which is not to say the two are usually exclusive - and in retrospect, I took an awful lot from the time I spent in his company, under South Africa's scorching summer sun.
In that sort of weather, however, even the geeks come out of their caves occasionally. So it was, shall we say somewhat incongruously, that that summer also marked the first time in my life I'd ever ridden a horse, and a decade and change later, I've never experienced anything else quite like it. Somewhere in the savannah, you see - I no longer recall where, but it took days of driving to get there - I was installed without prior warning upon a palomino mare, and accompanied by a cadre of adults all across the desert plains at midday, to gape at the stark, red-rock outcrops that stretched beyond the barren horizon every which way.
At one point our company split into groups, and I assume I ended up with the advanced band of riders because my aunt and almost-uncle numbered amongst them - that would seem sensible; on my own I was hopeless - but somehow the day only got more mind-blowing. Beneath me a gentle animal became a beast, galloping to keep up with its own kind and mine as they raced on ahead. Shortcuts were taken... fences were flown over... heart-rates, on the whole, were dangerously raised. I have rarely in my life been so thrilled, and at the same time so very afraid for my life, as I was by that afternoon's antics.
I remember telling people about that day later in my life, and thinking, as the unlikely story unfolded from my baby-fat face, how surreal the experience had been. How terrifying and breathless. It seemed so absurd that for a fair while, I'd all but convinced myself it had been a fever dream, rather than something real.
Range of Ghosts is a lot like that, then. Hence the lengthy digression. Also: it has horses. Horses!
In fact, the first meeting in the narrative entire is between our main character, Temur - the son of the Great Khagan and heir apparent to the Qersnyk kingdom - and the gorgeous horse which in effect saves him from certain death. Bansh and Temur are two of the few survivors of an awful slaughter, wherein one brother warred against another for the very throne our man stands to inherit.
Blood followed on all sides, obviously, and lest his luck run out, Temur takes up with a broken but not beaten family of fellow refugees on the road "through the mountains called the Range of Ghosts to Celadon Highway city of Qeshqer. Away from the dead." (p.16) He seeks shelter with these decent people, and receives respite: a brief reprieve from the intolerable horrors of war, the comfort of kindly strangers, and perhaps the promise of love with one woman, Edene.
Alas, a happy ending is not to be had so simply for him, or her, or anyone in truth — not in this bleakly beautiful book. Because in Range of Ghosts, the fantastic first act of the Eternal Sky trilogy - and I suppose I should stress that it is onlythat: an opening act that does not even attempt to appear standalone - in Range of Ghosts, the dead do not rest until they have been blessed, and an army of these seething specters has been set on Temur by someone with dark designs on his hide. To wit, one night, under a many moons - for there is one for each of the living heirs to the Great Kaghan's kingdom - Temur's idyll ends with the same violence that presaged it. And though they maim or murder everyone else they touch, the ghosts - unable as they are to best our man, with salt on his sword - take Edene alive.
So we come full circle, back to Temur with the horses in wooded glades, confusing happy fantasy with harsh reality. In fairness he knows how unlikely it is that he will ever see Edene again, in one piece at least, but short of going back to the battlefield for vengeance - and he would have to raise an army of his own to do that - Temur's options are few, and ugly to a one... excepting the prospect of saving a damsel in distress.
However misguided his intentions, Temur's hopes are mostly noble, and ultimately it is this meandering rescue attempt - meandering because he has no idea where Edene's been taken - that leads Temur into Samarkar's path. And it is the character of Samarkar, I think, that elevates Range of Ghosts into a space shared with the genre's greatest rather than merely its latest.
There are a lot of interesting observations to be made about Samarkar, but - my bad - this review's gone long already, so suffice it to say that she's every bit as imperative to Range of Ghosts' sweeping narrative as Temur, if not more so, for he is a more traditional fantasy protagonist by far. Samarkar, on the other hand, is a woman so sickened by being manipulated by powerful men all her life - being a dutiful daughter, a dear sister and a willing wife has only brought down disgrace - that she has opted to give up her child-bearing capabilities in exchange for a chance to harbour magic. When Bear introduces us, she's recovering from said sorcerous surgery, waiting to see if her life can take on this meaning, in want of any other.
Samarkar is a fantastic character from the offing - beautifully put though the others are, hers were the chapters I looked forward to for the first hundred pages - and when she meets a feverish Temur, she becomes even greater. "He knew her because she lifted him up and set him on Bansh's back when he could no longer cling there by himself [...] and he knew her because after she had led him and the mares out of danger, she girded herself in her coat of night and her collar of stars and went back into the cold valley to seek Edene." (p.143)
In addition to illustrating Samarkar's strength of mind and body both, this enmeshing of narrative perspectives allows Bear to welcome several other POV characters into the fray, and it's as well that this width exists, because the least interesting act of Range of Ghosts is yet ahead. Temur and Samarkar's time in the city of Qeshqer has its moments, but I dare say they are waylaid there too long by preening and politics when Range of Ghosts is at its best exploring the glorious freedom of the road, and the ride. One senses this section has a vital part to play in the series' grander narrative, but in contrast with the sheer exuberance on either side of it, it becomes a bore. Nor is it particularly pleasant for our imperiled prince:
"The weight of the palace itself seemed to press down on Temur's chest, shortening his breathing and closing his vision to a tunnel. His people believed it ill luck to spill blood at an execution, and so they sewed criminals into leather bags and heaped stones upon them until they died. He knew this was not the same [...] but for the moment he imagined that each breath grew shallower than the last, his lungs exhausted with pushing out against all that stone." (p.221)
If Range of Ghosts ends at all, it ends with an exhalation: with a great gasp drawn quickly in, then pushed slowly out. Which is to say, Bear's latest earns the To Be Continued with which it concludes, and though some in this age of pseudo-standalone installments of ongoing series will find its lack of resolution positively abhorrent, I did not, and I expect that's suggestive of how winning this thing is. Certainly, I was left wishing I could read The Shattered Pillars immediately, but the wait won't kill me; indeed, its absence may make my heart grow still fonder, and I am awfully fond of Range of Ghosts as is. It's this year's Under Heaven, and from a dyed-in-the-wool Guy Gavriel Kay devotee like me, that's saying something.
A magnificent start, then, to a trilogy that could and should cement Elizabeth Bear's place amongst the greats. Miss it at your own risk.
A little while ago, Mieneke van der Salm of A Fantastical Librarian fame asked if I wouldn't mind answering a couple of questions for her new Blogger Query feature.
I agreed immediately. I had already seen her interview with Stefan of Civilian Reader, and secretly, I was hoping she would ask. As you folks know, I talk about myself and my personal experiences here on The Speculative Scotsman almost every day, but always in support of a point, and the point had never before been me. In Blogger Query, however, the tables are turned.
One of the eternal book reviewer debates is to rate or not to rate? Where do you stand on the issue?
You know, I used to be militant about this. I was of the mind that a number, no matter how many or how few of them you had to choose from, was an awfully simplistic way to talk about anything.
The argument has always been the most important thing to me, and it still is: I’d much rather read about how a book reviewer formed an opinion than look at a number and be done with it. And that’s one of the risks, isn’t it? That you see a 5 or 6 or a 7 – not that there are terribly many of those (though that’s a whole other discussion) – and think... well why bother?
Ratings used to really rub me the wrong way, but I guess I’m getting mellow in my old age, because I’ve learned to live with them. As a sort of shorthand, sure... though I’m still of the opinion that book reviews shouldn’t be written in shorthand.
Negative reviews, yay or nay? And why?
Oh, yay. Absolutely! There aren’t very many things I find more fascinating than a negative perspective – so long as it’s reasoned and reasonably well written – on some new hotness that everyone seems to adore.
In fact the very idea that anyone would say nay to the notion of negative reviews – excepting authors, given their intimate involvement – the very idea offends me no end. What could possibly be the problem with someone having an opinion that isn’t identical to every other opinion? That’s the sort of thing the world needs more of, not less.
So say you want to know about the role of speculative fiction in modern English education, or the relationship between blogs and readers and writers. Say you're interested in hearing how The Speculative Scotsman came about, or what I want from the future. Where before you would have had to bribe me with bookish delights to secure such insights - I kid of course - now all anyone need do is pop on over to A Fantastical Librarian, and read the most recent installment of Blogger Query.
Which, to be perfectly frank, you should be doing on a daily basis anyway.
Last but not least, do keep your eyes peeled, peeps, because I'll be following up on a couple of the subjects Mieneke made me think about here on the site shortly, including firstly - and foremostly - the fall of blogging.
Ladies and gentlemen: today on The Speculative Scotsman, we're on autopilot.
And not, I should stress, because I'm busy, or better yet, busy being lazy. Oh no, not today. Today, we're on autopilot because the power company - I'll not name names - has opted, in its infinite wisdom, to cut the electricity to my entire town. From 7AM till 7PM.
At least they're being sort of symmetrical.
(I'm the kinda guy who can get behind a thing like that. Does that make me crazy? Anyway.)
In fairness to the folks, they let us know that this was on the cards a couple of weeks ago. I mean, they didn't give us any choice in the matter, and they're demanding access to the property at an ungodly hour OR ELSE, but at least we had a little while to acclimatise ourselves to the idea. So there's that.
And I have. That is to say, in time, I acclimatised to the idea. At first, I'll admit it, I declared a state of emergency. I started stockpiling bottled water, bought in a vast amount of snacks — strictly for sustenance, you understand. Furthermore, I stuffed the laptop so full of crap to keep me distracted during this offline apocalypse that I'll have to take some serious time to delete it all after this day is done. Assuming I make it.
But of course I'll make it. I knew that even then. Still, in this day and age, the idea of a whole day without power is sort of a scary thought, isn't it? And if not scary, then cruelly, unusually inconvenient. I mean, I'm going to get nothing done.
Then it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, no power - the absence of even the prospect of productivity - could be... brilliant.
So, long story short: today, I'm going to luxuriate - albeit temporarily - in the old ways. I'm going to go without the web, and gladly. I'm going to without the blog, without Twitter, without a connection to anything of any sort, and damn it all, I'm going to enjoy it. No video games, no movies, no music.
I'm even going turn off my mobile phone, because who needs half measures?
Can you imagine?
I can. :)
I've got what looks to be a good book: namely Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey. I've got a warm blanket. I've got a pot, enough bottled water to sink the Starship Intrepid, and a camping stove to make coffee if it comes to that. I may well be hoping it does.
Wish me luck, everyone!
And here, between you and me, if you in the near-to-far future have the chance to get off the grid for a day, pause in your mad panic buying. Take a moment, the better to remember this most excellent advice:
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.
Life couldn’t be better... until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.
Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the Starship Intrepid really is... and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.
***
Now don't get me wrong: growing up, I adored Star Trek. Every week for years, come hell or high water, I would watch repeats of The Next Generation, and a little later, when Deep Space Nine and Voyager were on air, my fandom went further. I spent a truly terrifying amount of money collecting a magazine called the Star Trek Fact Files, and on the rare occasions I had pocket change to spare, I would buy the books, too.
Even then, though, at the height of my fondness for all things Federation: an emerging awareness that Star Trek was... well. Far from perfect, to put it politely. If I were feeling less forgiving, I'd say it was pretty terrible at times. What with the bad writing, the clumsy characters and the awful effects; the mad science, the tired old tropes and an overabundance of filler. The failings of the episodic formula Star Trek rarely strayed from were many and various... and yet.
And yet, I'll buy the Blu-rays. I'll go to the cinema to see the rebooted movies. Then, whenever some nugget of not-news comes along to suggest there might be another weekly series in the offing, I get all kinds of excited. It's not just nostalgia... but it's that, for a start.
Redshirts, by John Scalzi, is probably smarter than Star Trek's ever been. It's certainly funnier, and markedly more self-aware:
It was a great story. It was great drama.
And it all rested upon him. And this moment. And this fate. This destiny of Ensign Davis.
Ensign Davis thought, Screw this, I want to live, and swerved to avoid the land worms.
But then he tripped and one of the land worms ate his face and he died anyway. (p.14)
Finally, for the moment, Redshirts is in every sense a product of the postmodern era, whereas its inspiration - in all its incarnations - was rather a throwback from the first.
The plot is difficult to talk about beyond what occurs in the blurb, but suffice it to say that the captain and his recurring crew are not, as Scalzi has it, our central characters. Instead, an assortment of Ensigns rule this roost—or should I say roast? In any event, we have Dahl, Duvall, Finn, Hester and Hanson, and for a fair while, it's tough to tell them all apart. I dare say Scalzi might be making a joke even here, but the lack of differentiation between Ensigns A through E is a legitimate issue in the early-going: it makes it hard to give a hoot when one or another of them meets a meaningless end, as per the manifest destiny of all the Redshirts riding the Starship Intrepid.
Luckily, this grim thinning leaves the reader with a more manageable cast of characters, and the initially pedestrian plot soon takes a fascinating recursive turn. By way of a planet of unlikely Ice Sharks, death by exploding head, and an incursion into the underbelly of the Dub U's most famous flagship, Scalzi finally takes our impromptu away team back in time, the better to finesse his familiar universe's very fabric. To admit any more of The Narrative than that would be to give the game away—but make no mistake: it's a great game.
The most remarkable thing about Redshirts, however, isn't its onionskin story, or its smart, snappy dialogue. Scalzi's witty exposition is winning, yes, and his observation-based sense of humour comes across as incisive as ever, if not quite cutting—and thanks be for that. But these aspects, each and every one, seem secondary to a far greater motivation, for the most remarkable thing about Redshirts is its honest-to-God warmth. This is a genuinely joyous celebration of a subject near and dear to almost all our hearts, and though it is not uncritical of the weekly TV series it spoofs, Scalzi's love of Star Trek - not to mention Stargate, Blake's 7, Babylon 5 and the original Battlestar Galactica - shines through, and brightly, at every stage.
Redshirts, then, is that rare thing: a story you wish wouldn't end. Alas, it does. Several times. In quick succession. Because following the conclusion of the novel proper, three codas - sidestories of a sort - which feel, I fear, awfully unnecessary. Attempts, one suspects, to fatten up what is otherwise a very slim volume. At a push, Redshirts represents two or three hours of reading, and come the conclusion - the first one, that is - you'll want more. Much more... if not of what Scalzi has in store.
Still, if you're anything like me, you'll be glad of what little of it there is. If you have any affection at all for Star Trek and its ilk, you're going to love Redshirts, at least for as long as it lasts.
Now let's take a lesson from the text in question and end on an aside: the reason I haven't mentioned Old Man's War or Fuzzy Nation or Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded is because, for some reason - and more's the pity, methinks - I haven't yet read Old Man's War or Fuzzy Nation or Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. If, however, Redshirts is in the least indicative of this author's output... then beam me up, Scalzi!
(I know, I know... but this is what I've had to resort to, because Joe Hill, the Borgovian Land Worm that he is, nabbed all the best puns already. "Read on and prosper," indeed.)
***
Redshirts
by John Scalzi
UK Publication: November 2012, Gollancz
US Publication: June 2012, Tor
