Books Received | The BoSS for 18/09/11

In The BoSS this week: a sequel... an anthology... a collection... a movie tie-in... and a contemporary classic, flipbackified.


Wait, flipbackiwhat?


Well, quite. What can I say? I'm feeling a mite uninspired today. But the books, they just keep on coming. Like respawning enemies! 

***

Daylight on Iron Mountain

by David Wingrove

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 01/11/11

by Corvus

Review Priority

4 (Pretty Bloody Likely)

The Blurb: Change is in the air...


The generals of the Middle Kingdom await the decision of the emperor.The campaign to secure the border from China to Iraq has reached a strange impasse. Two blood enemies have united against their common cause. But with the lives of thousands at his whim, the exalted Tsao Ch'un, the Son of Heaven, cannot decide. Destroy the Middle East in one blinding flash? Or take another path?


In the court of Tsao Ch'un, men of power have become smiling lackeys, whose graces conceal their fear, or their ambition. With his family held hostage by the empire, General Jiang Lei finds himself appointed to a special task: the orchestration of the last great war against the West. The total dominion of America.


But life in the world of levels continues. No hint of war, or want, or discontent can infiltrate the oppressive, ordered society that replaces the world Jake Reed once knew. Since the first airships rolled over the horizon, nothing has been the same. His new life means new thinking, new customs, a new way of behaving, and with his every move scrutinized, Jake can only serve the bureaucracy of new China. But he is not the only citizen who feels discontent with the anodyne new order...

My Thoughts: Now short of an entry in The BoSS in advance of its release, I haven't actually blogged about Son of Heaven at all. That is to say the first book of the re-envisioned Chung Kuo, a now twenty volume-long sf series Corvus have hopes of publishing over the next couple of years. 


However! Behind the scenes, I've actually spent an inordinate amount of time reading Son of Heaven, and then writing about it... at some length. The resulting review should see the light of day sooner now rather than later - I'll tell you when - and I aim to polish off Daylight on Iron Mountain (actually the second half of the single new introductory volume Wingrove wrote to bring the series up to speed) sometime between now and then; it's the decent thing to do, after all.

House of Fear

edited by Jonathan Oliver

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 01/10/11

by Rebellion

Review Priority

5 (A Sure Thing)

The Blurb: The tread on the landing outside the door, when you know you are the only one in the house...


The wind whistling through the eves, carrying the voices of the dead...


The figure glimpsed briefly through the cracked window of a derelict house...


Editor Jonathan Oliver brings horror home with a collection of haunted house stories by some of the finest writers working in the horror genre, including Joe R. Lansdale, Sarah Pinborough, Lisa Tuttle, Christopher Priest, Adam L. G. Nevill, Nicholas Royle, Chaz Brenchley, Christopher Fowler, Gary Kilworth, Weston Ochse, Eric Brown, Tim Lebbon, Nina Allan, Stephen Volk, Paul Meloy and more.

My Thoughts: I never did review The End of the Line, did I?


My bad! It wasn't a perfect anthology, as I recall, but it was worth my time, and it would have been yours too, I expect, if you were (or indeed are) in the least interested in some solid short horror fiction.


House of Fear, from those stories I've cherry-picked from it, is very much more of the same -- but better. Better by far, in fact. Certainly there've been far fewer duds in this timely collection of haunted house stories; though there's room for a few yet.


Expect a full review sometime... spooky! :)

The Uninnocent: Stories

by Bradford Morrow

Vital Statistics

Published in the US

on 05/12/11

by Pegasus Books

Review Priority

4 (Pretty Bloody Likely)

The Blurb: Bradford Morrow's stories have garnered him awards such as the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes and have given him a devoted following. Now gathered here for the first time is a collection of his finest, gothic tales. 

A young man whose childhood hobby of collecting sea shells and birds’ nests takes a sinister turn when he becomes obsessed with acquiring his brother’s girlfriend, in 'The Hoarder' (selected as one of the Best American Noir Stories of the Century). An archeologist summoned to attend his beloved sister’s funeral is astonished to discover it is not she who has died, but someone much closer to him, in 'Gardener of Heart.' A blind motivational speaker has a crisis of faith when he suddenly regains his sight, only to discover life was better lived in the dark, in 'Amazing Grace.'

In all of these stories, readers will find themselves enthralled and captivated by one of the most potent voices in contemporary American fiction.

My Thoughts: And from one short story collection to another. When it rains, eh?


Of course, I really did adore The Diviner's Tale, when I read it for review back in January, and given that it remains among my favourite novels of 2011 - it's not been a year full of surprises otherwise, has it? - The Uninnocent is a gimme for a Short Fiction Corner or two at the very least. Bedtime reading, I do declare!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

by John le Carre

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 04/08/11

by Sceptre

Review Priority

3 (We'll See)

The Blurb: The enduring novel by one of our greatest storytellers.

George Smiley, who is a troubled man of infinite compassion, is also a single-mindedly ruthless adversary as a spy.

The scene which he enters is a Cold War landscape of moles and lamplighters, scalp-hunters and pavement artists, where men are turned, burned or bought for stock. Smiley's mission is to catch a Moscow Centre mole burrowed thirty years deep into the Circus itself.

My Thoughts: Would you look at that! It's only baby's first John le Carre. :)


I've been hearing about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for what feels like a lifetime, and this movie tie-in edition seems to me the perfect opportunity to get caught up on what I understand to be among the best of the back-catalogue of books by an author many readers swear by.


I really must read it before I see the film, though; knowing me that'd only be another nail in its coffin, because much as I might profess a preference for books over movies... movies are quicker. And time is ever of the essence, isn't it?

Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 30/06/11

by Sceptre

Review Priority

4 (Pretty Bloody Likely)

The Blurb: "Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies..."

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagans California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation. The narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his extraordinary novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

My Thoughts: Yes, Cloud Atlas.


Yes, Cloud Atlas, in a funny new format.


I've been hearing about these new-fangled flipbacks for a while now, but I'll be brutal: until I actually laid hands on one, I couldn't for the life of me see the appeal. Then I laid hands on one. Now I do!


They're dinky, pocket-sized editions with bible pages and a strange aspect ratio -- which mightn't sound particularly marvelous, but seeing, in this case, might just be believing. We'll see.


Admittedly, it doesn't hurt that there's also the appeal of a book by a terrific author I never quite got around to finishing... or even reading beyond the first third. I know, I know; shame on me. But really, when isn't there shame on me?

***

Well, that's it for the week in books received, boys and girls. See you all soon. *waves*


In the meantime, given that I've fessed up to not one but two huge literary oversights this week, would anyone else care to share their deepest, darkest reading secrets?


It won't go any further than here, I swears it!

Book Review | Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs.

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here - one of whom was his own grandfather - were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason. And somehow - impossible though it seems - they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

***

There is something deeply unsettling about the photograph on the cover of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, don't you think?

Never mind that it's black and white - though in this day and age the very idea of something old is apt, I'm sure, to unnerve some. But no, I don't think it's that. Look instead at the girl; unassuming little thing in stockings and a frock, stood in the middle of the woods. Look at her face.

Strange, isn't it, how it seems to belong on the body of a much older woman?

Look at her feet. Closely, now... do you see what I see?

Nothing ambiguous about that, is there? By jove, the girl looks like she's levitating!

This picture, an "authentic, vintage found photograph" (p.35) from the collection of Yefim Tovbis, sets the scene marvelously for all the painful, wondrous things to come in Ransom Riggs' debut novel.  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is in fact a narrative contrived - or rather ordered around - a selection of such photographs, and though these are little more than curios, they confer upon the darkly fantastic beats of this brief volume - the first in a proposed series, as I understand it - a sense of innocence despoiled, or beauty maligned, that describes this uneasy and deeply endearing novel to a T.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is at heart the story of a boy dealing with his grandfather's death. We never have the pleasure of meeting Abraham Portman for ourselves - in fact the book begins with his untimely passing - but Jacob, just sixteen years old when he finds his batty old grandfather gasping his last in the woods behind his home, remembers him fondly enough for us all to get the measure of the man: as a good man, first and foremost, but also a real character. A Jewish refugee from Germany during the war, come to America to escape his past, Abraham's tall tales about awful Lovecraftian monsters and the period he spent in a home for "gifted" children were like the gospel to Jacob when he was younger. Especially because he had photographs to back up his crazy claims.

...I really did believe him - for a few years, at least - though mostly because I wanted to, like other kids my age wanted to believe in Santa Claus. We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing them becomes too high, which for me was the day in second grade when Robbie Jensen pantsed me at lunch in front of a table of girls and announced I that I believed in fairies. It was just deserts, I suppose. (p.16)

Jacob has always had a certain connection with his grandfather - a connection his own father never had with Abraham - and he is with him, too, whether for good or for ill, when he passes. And as he does, in the periphery of his vision, Jacob glimpses a creature "like something out of David Lynch's nightmares" (p.45) tearing through the forest: a sight that will haunt him for months to come.

Could it be that there was something to his grandfather's lunatic ramblings after all?

Jacob's psychologist, a necessary evil, doesn't think so, but when our troubled young protagonist discovers the location of the home his late grandfather told such wonderful and terrible stories about - on an island off Wales - and begs his parents to take him there come the Summer, Jacob finds in Dr. Golan an unlikely ally. And so they go to Cairnholm.

Terrified and anxious and excited, Jacob wastes no time in trekking out to the ruins of Miss Peregine's Home for Peculiar Children - for so it was known, before the bombing. What he finds there, however, is not at all what he had expected:

My grandfather had described it a hundred times, but in his stories the house was always a bright, happy place - big and rambling, but full of light and laughter. What stood before me now was not refuge from monsters but a monster itself, staring down from its perch on the hill with vacant hunger. Trees burst forth from broken windows and skins of scabrous vine gnawed at the walls like antibodies attacking a virus - as if nature itself had waged war against it - but the house seemed unkillable, resolutely upright despite the wrongness of its angles and the jagged teeth of sky visible through sections of collapsed roof. (p.79)

There - right there! - the horror of Miss Peregine's Home for Peculiar Children begins in earnest. And what of it there is is supremely, even effortlessly effective. But stuffed into this magnificent short novel there is also - count 'em - comedy, fantasy, romance, mystery, science fiction, and last but not least the coming-of-age fable. Miss Peregine's Home for Peculiar Children, then, is many things. One thing it is not, however - not for a single, solitary moment - is dull.

In fact, Ransom Riggs' debut boasts so very many aspects that, I'll be honest, I was expecting an identity crisis to strike these charming ideas down all through the second half.

I was nervous and baffled and queasily excited all at the same time. Part of me felt like something momentous was about to happen. The other part of me expected to wake up at any moment, to come out of this fever dream or stress episode or whatever it was and wake up with my face in a puddle of drool on the Smart Aid break room table and think, Well, that was strange, and then return to the boring old business of being me. (p.139) 

But no. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children may not be a neat novel, or a tidy one, but it is from first to last entirely its own, distinct thing, fearsome but family-friendly - the better for the prospects of the inevitable film 20th Century Fox mean to make of it - only as delightful as it is disturbing, and in equal measure chilling and touching.

Truly, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a terrific thing, beautifully presented and confidently composed, and perfectly poised - I kid you not - to inherit the legions of readers searching for the Next Big Thing to attend midnight launches of. Overlook it at your own peril. 

***

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

by Ransom Riggs

UK & US Publication: June 2011, Quirk Books

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Short Story Corner | Mile 81 by Stephen King

Stephen King has spent what seems a disproportionate amount of time and energy writing about evil cars.

Not, I think, the strongest of concepts in the first place - though there is, admittedly, a certain material menace to these multi-tonne monsters with metallic grilles for grimaces - nor have any of Christine, Under the Dome, From a Buick 8 and so on and so forth convinced me that I'm missing something pivotal. In any event King has systematically mined this minor idea for what little it's worth, and then some.

And then a modicum more! 

And yet. In Mile 81, an exclusive e-book released this September to whet appetites for 11.22.63, the latest tome to come from the undisputed King of pop horror, the man's at it again; albeit on a much more minor scale. Mile 81 is at heart the story of one Pete Simmons, a little fella to his chagrin abandoned by the rapscallions his big brother runs with. Thus on his lonesome one afternoon, and armed only with a magnifying glass which he may or may not use to terrorise ants, Pete steals along to a legendary rest stop he's heard whispers about - signposted as per the title of this short story, and of course abandoned to the hijinx of experimental children - where who knows what adult delights await him?

In fact he finds a half-full bottle of vodka on the road there, and more spread-legged centerfolds pinned to the walls of the rest stop - an eerie Burger King gone to grime - than a ten year old (going on eleven) could ever imagine. Pete takes in his fill of both of these things and promptly falls asleep, sated.

But in the parking lot an old station wagon rolls up, with an unholy appetite fit to put Pete's to shame. Covered in muck and empty, so far as anyone can tell, the car's door creaks open... but no driver steps out.

Mile 81 he is long enough by short story standards, but only that because in place of proferring a single victim to demonstrate the inhuman hunger of this vile vehicle, King devotes one, then another, then a practically a whole family, by which point the point has been so belaboured as to test one's patience. Only then do we return to Pete, who's slept like a baby through all this awfulness. Saying that, Pete has a trick or two up his sleeve, and for once the last of Mile 81's six quick chapters claws an amount of the narrative's early mystery and tension back from the great car showroom in the sky.

Mile 81 is never, however, better than it is during that first chapter, which brings - yes - The Body (aka Stand By Me) to mind, and moments of Joe Hill's Horns. But this short story is also symptomatic of the worst of Stephen King: count among some truly terrible product placement, including tips of the hat to Christine - the film rather than the novel - and the comic book American Vampire, which King is of course also involved in. I could have stomached these metatextual references with little ill will... even the heads-ups to Harry Potter and Doctor Who have their place, I suppose.

But this:

"The beauty of the parked cruiser, at least in Maine State Trooper Jimmy Golding's opinion, was that you didn't really need to do anything [...] All his attention was on the iPad propped against the lower arc of the steering wheel.

"He was playing a Scrabble-like game called Words With Friends, his Internet connection provided by AT&T."

I'll thank you not to do that EVER AGAIN, Stephen King!

I am not much amused, obviously. But Mile 81 does feature an excerpt of 11.22.63, King's forthcoming tome about time travel and the assassination of JFK, and it's actually not half bad. So there's that.

That and the first chapter, which for all my criticisms is legitimately interesting. Would that Mile 81 had remained so...

Video Game Review | Deus Ex: Human Revolution, dev. Eidos-Montreal

It is the year 2027: fully quarter of a century before the events of Deus Ex.

Biomechanical augmentations are not yet commonplace, or very affordable in the eyes of the everyman, but the bubble around them is blowing up. Everyone wants augs; everyone except those folks who think them against God, or the natural evolution of the human animal.

Competition in the design, manufacture and distribution of these technologies is fierce, but Sarif Industries are at the forefront of their field, and one of their researchers - Dr. Megan Reed - thinks she may have just discovered the game-changer: a double-helix delivery vehicle for the bleeding edge biotech that should circumvent the need for the anti-rejection drugs all augs as yet rely upon, to stop their bodies from booting out these strange foreign objects which allow their privileged users to jump higher, run faster and think more quickly, among a many other talents.

But just as Megan is about to announce her discovery, Sarif Industries' headquarters in Detroit is attacked by a small army of heavily-augmented supersoldiers. Security Chief Adam Jensen, Megan's ex-boyfriend, does everything in his power to turn back this violent incursion, but man is no match for machine - or rather man/machine - and Megan, along with all those scientists involved in this project which could revolutionise an entire race, are either killed or kidnapped.

Adam only survives the attack by the skin of his teeth, and when he awakens, six months later, the skin of his teeth is pretty much all that's left of him... because to save his life - not to mention make him better able to see to these supersoldiers - his employers have refitted him with all the augmentations under the sun. Adam has hardly settled back into his role at Sarif when he picks up the trail of the shady organisation responsible for the death of so many, so close to him, and the destruction of so much, of such vital importance.

And now he can fight fire with fire...

So begins Deus Ex: Human Revolution, at last a worthy and worthwhile successor to a game that in its era completely revolutionised the way we play. Eidos-Montreal's long-gestating sequel cannot aspire towards that impossible crown again, but it embraces both those core tenets of the original - player choice, first and foremost, but also a noirish near-future, and an onion-skin, discoverable (or not) narrative rich with morality and conspiracy and intrigue - as well as those innumerable game-changers that the medium has for its part embraced in the decade since Deus Ex's release.

Invariably what will strike you first, upon booting up Human Revolution, are its incredible looks. And, after years of browns and greys and muted yellows on a good day, my oh my are they a sight for sore eyes! Truly, the design imperative behind this game - an neo-noir empire of black and gold and beautiful, fuscian blues - is so unique in the dreary follow-the-leader industry of today as to make this world, and its dazzling lights and dizzying heights, its glittering, gossamer sheen, come alive in mere moments. It will take you about thirty hours to beat Human Revolution, plus or minus perhaps five depending on how far down the rabbit hole you fall, and even then, you will not want to leave.

I didn't.

I started a second playthrough.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Looks, as we all know, are only skin-deep, and what, you might be wondering, is the ghost in this machine? Well, I bet you've already met - at least I hope for your sake you have - for it is in every meaningful sense the spirit of the original Deus Ex: a game you can play pretty much any way you please - whether by stealthing or shooting or hacking or simply exploring your way into any number of high-stakes scenarios, and if you're lucky out of them again - for either as little or as long as you please, thanks to an unrestricted save system and a selection of activities which cater to those with mere minutes or many hours on their hands.

Do not misunderstand me: this is also a game which very much rewards a certain level of dedication, and though the most casual gamers may flounder somewhat, those players who have perhaps drifted from the industry in the last ten years will find returning, by way of Human Revolution, a lot like riding a bike.

That is to say, a gold-leafed bike with onyx trim, twelve light but durable wheels, a multi-functional heads-up display complete with cruise control, temperature regulation, satellite guidance, impenetrable security systems and its very own onboard library. But for all that, it's still easy riding... unless you're going to go and jack the difficulty up, which--- well. Don't make the same mistake I did. Human Revolution can be as hard as it can be easy; exactly, then, as all games would be in an ideal world.

These days, player choice is a back-of-the-box bullet point every game developer likes to blow their trumpet about, but precious few games actually realise this idea, or reward such a spread of play-styles as thoroughly as Human Revolution. For instance I specced my Adam Jensen out like Mr Metal Gear Solid himself, Solid Snake, investing my currency and experience points, of which there are no shortage, into Praxis kits to upgrade my stealth augs for better radar, silent running, undetectable takedowns, and later on, an invisibility cloak that quickly became my go-to tech in tricky situations. When I had to shoot dudes, I shot them with a stun gun rather than the pistol I carried throughout, and trusty tranquilizer darts rather than an assault rifle, then dragged all the bodies off into some shadowy corner of the maps... till there were stacks of them, I tell you, stacks of them!

I tend to think, having played this way, that I saw the best of Human Revolution, and two achievements in the Xbox 360 version - for never setting off an alarm, or killing a single person - were fair impetus to do so. In the end, alas, I got neither: in part because there came a point in the endgame where a choice I'd made in the approach to it came back to bite me, and I had to kill to live - alarming several guards, needless to say - but also because I wanted to see what else this game could have been, if I'd played it another way.

And as a shooter, Human Revolution is competent enough; the action RPG has come a very long way. It's no Modern Warfare, of course, nor even a Mass Effect 2 in that regard, but its mechanics are more satisfying than say Alpha Protocol's, and a great deal improved over those you may remember from Fallout 3, to call out a couple of Human Revolution's contemporaries.

This single choice - to kill or not to kill, that is the question - has huge gameplay ramifications, as have the others you will make in the course of the meaty single-player campaign of Human Revolution... and there are myriad other decisions in the offing. Take a bribe, or dob in the doer? Plant drugs in this one guy's apartment to get him arrested, or heave him of his balcony? Risk your life to save a certain supporting character, or worry about your own well-being first?

Your particular choices do not impact the narrative of Human Revolution so much as the experience. Whether you shoot to kill or only to stun... whether you save or sacrifice... you can still hack all the computers you please to read notes and emails that expand upon the story, browse all the e-books scattered throughout the environments, and listen to henchmen chatting about the pros and cons of one dastardly plan or another. Ultimately, how the story ends - in one of four ways - is the result of a single decision you will make before the final cut-scene. Which I'll admit I found a little disappointing.

Nevertheless, Human Revolution is a vision so grand, and a game so understanding and forgiving in its design and execution that I do not find it difficult to forgive the slightness of its lastmost moments. It is still easier to overlook what is some pretty terrible voice acting, and the fact that this belated but brilliantly distinct sequel plays fast and loose with the notion of a steady frame rate -- though I understand the PC version is rather more reasonable in that respect. These are minor missteps at worst, and at its best, in its looks and its essential, surprisingly faithful feel, Deux Ex: Human Revolution is, if not a full-blown revolution in its own right, then a pliable and riotously rewarding experience which could very well lead to one.

Easily game of the year material.

Books Received | The BoSS for 11/09/11

By and large, the murder of books purportedly received this week weren't actually received this week at all: rather, three of the five are proofs I've had for a little while - or a long while, in one case - but have only just now cottoned-on to, because of recent reviews.

Which just goes to show what power a good blog can have. But with great power comes great---

---ah, why even bother finishing that sentence? :/

To the book-cave!

***

Spellbound

by Blake Charlton

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 29/09/11

by Harper Voyager

Review Priority

5 (A Sure Thing)

The Blurb: Francesca DeVega is a successful healer in the city of Avel, wielding magical text to close wounds and disspell curses, but her life is thrown into chaos when a dead patient suddenly sits up and tells her to run. Now Francesca is in the middle of a game she doesn’t understand, one that ties her to the notorious rogue wizard, Nicodemus Weal, and brings her face to face with demons, demigods, and a man she thought she’d never see again.

It has been ten years since Nicodemus Weal escaped the Starhaven Academy, where he was considered disabled and useless, where he battled the demon who stole his birthright and killed his friends. Unable to use the magical languages of his own people, Nico has honed his skills in the dark language of the kobolds, readying himself for his next encounter with the demon. But there are complications: his mentor suffers from an incurable curse, his half-sister’s agents are hunting him, and he’s still not sure what part Francesca DeVega will play.

My Thoughts: The new novel from friend of the blog - and friend to man at large - Blake Charlton. In fact you may recall that I helped launched the cover art for this sequel to Spellwright back in March. If not, shame on you, inconstant reader!


I'm only teasing. Anyway, the early reaction to Spellbound that I've seen has been almost uniformly positive, but I'm not going to lie: what I've read of it so far - and I've read perhaps half of the thing as of the time of this wrighting (ahem) - has been... a bit of a disappointment. Bigger, certainly, but not better.


Here's hoping the second half improves on the first. Because I really did dig book one; it'd be a shame to see this series in the least diminished by its annualisation.

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

by Benjamin Hale

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 01/04/11

by Atlantic Books

Review Priority

4 (Pretty Bloody Likely)

The Blurb: Bruno Littlemore... linguist, artist, philosopher. A life defined by a soaring mind, yet bound by a restrictive body. Born in down-town Chicago, Bruno's precocity pulls him from an unremarkable childhood, and under the tuition of Lydia, his intellect dazzles a watching world. But when falls in love with his mentor, the world turns on them with outrage: Bruno is striving to be something he is not, and denying everything that he is. For despite his all too human complexities, dreams and frailties, Bruno's hairy body, flattened nose and jutting brow are, undeniably, the features of a chimpanzee.

Like its protagonist, this novel is big, abrasive, witty, perverse, earnest and accomplished. The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore goes beyond satire by showing us not what it means, but what it feels like be human - to love and lose, learn, aspire, grasp, and, in the end, to fail. 

My Thoughts: Here we come to the first of the books I've had kicking about for a while. This one comes highly recommended by Amanda of Floor to Ceiling Books, with whom I traded a few recommendations the other day, as you do. I ended up with this, which sounds lovely, and sad, and potentially very, very powerful; she got Boxer, Beetle.

So we'll see how that goes! :)

Black Light

by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan & Stefan Romano

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 13/10/11

by Mulholland Books

Review Priority

3 (We'll See)

The Blurb: If you have a supernatural problem that won't go away, you need Buck Carlsbad: private eye, exorcist, and last resort. Buck's got a way with spirits that no one else can match, and a lot of questions that only spirits can answer.

He's spent years looking deep into the Blacklight on the other side of death, trying to piece together the mystery that destroyed his family and left him for dead. It's dangerous, but it's Buck's only hope of finding out what happened to them - and what made him the way he is.

But then Buck takes a call from a billionaire, and finds himself working the most harrowing case of his career. One that will either reveal the shocking secrets of his life, or end it forever... 

My Thoughts: Yep, you read that right. Black Light comes to us from not one, not two, but THREE authors!

Well, of course it does, because it's by some of the guys who worked on the worst SAW films of all -- and that's saying something. Nevertheless, without a SAW film that I can love to hate this year - and frankly the Paranormal Activity movies have been too good to fill that absence - there is, I'll admit, every chance that I'll give in to temptation and see what Black Light's all about.

But THREE authors? I get that it's perfectly commonplace in film, but I have to wonder: how would that even work with a book?

The Recollection

by Gareth Powell

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 01/09/11

by Solaris

Review Priority

4 (Pretty Bloody Likely)

The Blurb: When his brother disappears into a bizarre gateway on a London Underground escalator, failed artist Ed Rico and his brother's wife Alice have to put aside their feelings for each other to go and find him. Their quest through the 'arches' will send them hurtling through time, to new and terrifying alien worlds.

Four hundred years in the future, Katherine Abdulov must travel to a remote planet in order to regain the trust of her influential family. The only person standing in her way is her former lover, Victor Luciano, the ruthless employee of a rival trading firm.

Hard choices lie ahead as lives and centuries clash and, in the unforgiving depths of space, an ancient evil stirs...

My Thoughts: The Recollection is another of the three releases I've had on the tower of books To Be Read for a fair wee while, and this time it was a newspaper review, by way of another favourite sf author of mine - Eric Brown - that made reading Gareth Powell's second novel suddenly a priority.

In fact I've read a little of The Recollection since that time, and it just so happens I've found it rather reminiscent of the work of Eric Brown; specifically his Kings of Eternity. This is an unqualified Good Thing!

A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 18/08/11

by Gollancz

Review Priority

3 (We'll See)

The Blurb: Rosalinda Fitzroy had been asleep for 62 years when she was woken by a kiss. Locked away in the chemically-induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten sub-basement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now, her parents and her first love are long dead, and Rose - hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire - is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat. Desperate to put the past behind her and adapt to her new world, Rose finds herself drawn to the boy who kissed her awake, hoping that he can help her to start fresh. But when a deadly danger jeopardizes her fragile new existence, Rose must face the ghosts of her past with open eyes - or be left without any future at all.

My Thoughts: And we'll round out what could be the single most disingenuous week in books received history with the third of this week's three recommendations... from elsewhere! 

For A Long, Long Sleep - which I'm ashamed to say I had a proof of back before the Summer had even begun, as I recall - it was your friends and mine, The Book Smugglers, whose review put me onto Anna Sheehan's YA debut in earnest. Initially I think the cover portrayed it as such a girly book I couldn't imagine being seen with it in public or in private, but Thea was so very high on A Long, Long Sleep - and she's got very fine taste as a rule - that I couldn't very well let that silly thing put me off any longer. So!

***

What's a book-cave without books?

It's rubbish, is what it is - just a hole in the wall of the world - so I'll sign off for the week and speak to you all again shortly, by which time we'll have a few more recent arrivals to shelve.

What say you we meet again right here at the same time next week?

Book Review | Dead Water by Simon Ings

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

Off the coast of Sri Lanka, a tramp steamer is seized by pirates. The captain has his wife and son aboard and knows that their survival depends on giving the pirates exactly what they want. But what can they possibly want with his worn-out ship and its cargo of junk?

On the island of Bali a tsunami washes up a rusting container. Inside, the mummified remains of a shipping magnate missing for 30 years and a hand-written journal of his last days locked within his aluminum tomb.

Through the dusty industrial towns of India's Great Trunk Road, a disgraced female detective tracks a criminal syndicate. Her life has been ruined, but she will have her revenge.

In a backstreet Mayfair office, an automated distress signal is picked up on a private satellite network. A ship is missing. A Dead Water ship. Dead Water is the key to everything. A code name for a covert operation initiated during World War Two. But why is it unravelling now, and what will the consequences be?

***

You can get the measure of most books within a chapter or two, as a rule. Sometimes a sentence is all it takes; a single sentence, or perhaps a paragraph, and you have a general sense of what's to come, what to expect, whether or not it's in your interests (given your interests) to push on.

Of course equally - though a lot less often - texts can obfuscate their intent... veil those things that they are essentially about in such secrets and half-truths and outright lies as to leave the reader reeling; uncertain as to the narrative import of this character or that plot thread, and grasping desperately at whatsoever happens to come their way, whether it is meaningful or otherwise.

Perhaps half of Simon Ings' seventh novel, Dead Water, had come and gone before I had the slightest clue what in the world was actually going on. Just for starters, there was an airship in the Arctic and some baffling political business in the Persian Gulf -- a government-sponsored coup, I gathered. There followed an awful flood in Uttar Pradesh, a tragic rail crash and, intertwined with it, the creation of a Djinn from twins. Finally in the first of Dead Water's five parts, we meet a beat cop on the trail of her mother's murderer.

I say finally. In fact there's nothing in the least conclusive about our introduction to poor, misbegotten Roopa Vish - nor Eric Moyse, polar explorer come shipping magnate, counter-intelligence officer David Brooks, or little Rishi Ansari from the rice paddies - though she is, as it transpires, one of the myriad protagonists of this generation-spanning mystery meets thriller. As are the others, all of whom we meet in such quick succession as to seem indistinct; some of whom don't pop up again for hundreds more pages; none of whom we can truly know till the truth behind Dead Water is revealed.

And what's that? Well... so far as I can tell, and without giving anything away - perfectly par for the course, then - it's a book about boxes, of a sort. "Boxes and boxes and boxes within boxes: this story has swallowed the earth." (p.174) 

Dead Water is a deeply difficult text to get one's head around -- and by design, I don't doubt, for Ings seems an assiduously intelligent author: dynamic and deliberate, daring and often dazzling. This is never more in evidence than during the catastrophic accident aforementioned, wherein "the Purushottam Express collides with the stalled Kalindi service just outside Firozobad, causing the second-worst rail crash in Indian history" (p.49) and transforming two of its youngest victims into omniscient spirits which in a sense haunt every narrative thereafter.

And what of it?

Ings depicts this pivotal moment in a virtuoso bubble of what I can only describe as bullet-time; breaking down the infinitesimal beats of the collision - a real historical tragedy - with such painful precision as to convey in both the micro and the macro the way the world must seem to stop, to grind to a halt, at such abject horror. Thus the reader feels each and every excruciating snap and buck and break as Abhik and Kaneer come into their strange power, and hundreds die around them, including them.

But though "the boys will spin this story out for as long as they can, they're learning fast, they're getting good at this [...] narrative logic demands that what goes up must come down," (p.42) and so indeed it does, eventually. Sort of. There is, at least, a moment when Dead Water starts to come together; or rather than a single moment of revelation, a point at which its many, many threads - no more than an accumulation of seemingly unrelated events before - are at last entangled. And if this entanglement is not necessarily equal to the task of imbuing meaning upon all the abstracted episodes preceding it, then it serves as a frame of reference - a context - for what remains of Dead Water.

And much remains, even now. For "round the bend is a bend and around that bend is another bend. Madness and despair." (p.337) But it passes. And what takes its place... well. I'll never tell.

It speaks to Dead Water's ineffable power, and craft, and cleverness - yes - that I did not for a second think to put it aside to read something more immediately satisfying, for what satisfaction there is in Simon Ings' novel, in the end, is worth its every ounce in gold... or plutonium. It is intelligent but not, I think, at all pretentious. It is complex, certainly, but only as byzantine as (for instance) the gradual back and forth of a box full of boxes across the Indian ocean.

Imagine Alejandro González Iñárritu had written a novel in the mode of his films Babel and Amores Perros, about the inextricable interconnectedness of not merely language or love but the containers almost everything we care about comes in, and returns to. Dead Water is brilliant, in that fashion. But not natural, and never easy.

Then again, is existence ever such a simple thing?

***

Dead Water

by Simon Ings

UK Publication: August 2011, Corvus

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading