The Index Updateth

Just a quick post to remind you all of the review index. It's somewhere over there on the sidebar, sure, but for myself, I haven't noticed it for months, so I thought I'd bring the old beast out for one more turn in the spotlight.

Not to mention I spent some of last night updating it - for the first time in since April! What a disorganised blogger I've been...

Anyway. If you ever come along to The Speculative Scotsman and there's nothing new for you to read, or else nothing terribly interesting, or if you're thinking of buying a book and you want to know a little more about it before you put down the dough, don't forget the review index. It's not even six months old and it's got links to about 100 reviews already, across video games, film and (of course) literature, lovingly arranged in alphabetic order. So:

Index of Reviews on TSS

Go there, and be merry.

If that isn't enough to tide you over, you might also think to drop by another handy collection of speculative fiction reviews. The Epic Fantasy Review Index over at Genre Reader has just been spring cleaned, and it's well worth your time to stop by and see what it has to offer. I'm going to let Jeff explain it to you himself.

With that, adieu!

Book Review: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

"Johannes Cabal has never pretended to be a hero of any kind. There is, after all, little heroic about robbing graves, stealing occult volumes, and being on nodding terms with demons. His purpose, however, is noble. His researches are all directed to raising the dead. For such a prize, some sacrifices are necessary. One such sacrifice was his own soul, but he now sees that was a mistake – it's not just that he needs it for his research to have validity, but now he realises he needs it to be himself. Unfortunately, his soul now rests within the festering bureaucracy of Hell. Satan may be cruel and capricious but, most dangerously, he is bored. It is Cabal's unhappy lot to provide him with amusement.

"In short, a wager: in return for his own soul, Cabal must gather one hundred others – in one year.

"One year to beat the Devil at his own game. And isn't that perhaps just a little heroic?"

***

When a book begins with a visit to Hell which outs the ghastly gates as anticipated by a painstakingly organised bureaucracy boasting a tree's worth of paperwork per person and three year-long wait for entry, you know you're in for an untraditional experience. In short order, Johannes Cabal, necromancer extraordinaire, breaches the red tape seeking an audience with Satan - and by the hair on my chinny chin-chin, he gets one. The pair struck a bargain years ago, you see, whereby our reanimating anti-hero sold his soul for a taste of forbidden fruit, but Cabal has since had time to reconsider the deal. So he's come to Hell to renegotiate the terms of his contract with Satan. Easier said than does, one imagines...

Eventually, however, Satan acquiesces. But he has his conditions - of course he does. A new contract is drawn up, stipulating that Cabal will recover his immortal soul when and only when he collects, in the space of a single year, the signatures of a hundred individuals; his soul for a hundred others, in short. To help him wrangle together so many souls, Satan gives Cabal command of a travelling carnival of the damned and a viscous ball of blood. The necromancer is then summarily ejected from the premises, with nothing to do but get his show on the road.

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer is Jonathan L. Howard's debut novel, but hardly his first time at the helm of such a creative endeavour. Howard has been puttering away behind the scenes of the video game industry for decades, as a programmer, a designer, and latterly a script writer. He's perhaps best known for his work on the Broken Sword series: adventures games a la The Secret of Monkey Island mode mostly concerned with Templar conspiracies. Now I'm a fan of the Broken Sword franchise, but not such a die-hard as to assert it's either the smartest adventure game around or the funniest. Nevertheless, on the basis of Howard's involvement with the first three installments of that series, I came to Johannes Cabal the Necromancer expecting a rollicking good time full of wit and absurdity.

Particularly on that latter count, Johannes Cabal's first outing - soon to be superseded, I understand, by his time as a detective - delivers in abundance. Cabal's excursion to a pocket quantum universe stands out, alongside his time in a haunted train station that bleeds depression into the atmosphere, and a chase around the carnival that culminates in an encounter with Layla the Latex Lady. There are moments of absolute madness throughout Johannes Cabal the Necromancer - the highlights of the whole affair - where the weird meets the wonderful and the fallout is appropriately baffling.

Sadly, absurdity does not always equal fun, and there are as many misses in Howard's debut as hits. Humour is a very personal thing, of course - you can't expect everyone to crack up at the same jokes - but after a strong start, you get the distinct sense that the comic aspect of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer has been put on the back-burner to be replaced by episodic encounters that bear little to no relevance on the narrative's driving force, which is to say the collection of a hundred souls by hook or by crook. I'd go so far as to say many of the chapters of this novel would be better set as short stories. They're pleasant diversions, one and all, but as part of a larger tapestry they do little to enrich the experience entire.

Let's face it, though: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer has few pretensions to intricate narrative. Above all else, it's a romp. As such, it's a success, albeit not quite so hilarious a one as I had hoped. Cabal is a brilliantly love-him-or-hate-him guide on a whistle-stop tour of the underworld, an anti-hero of the highest order whose acerbic wit makes some truly stomach-churning subjects tolerable. Howard, meanwhile, seems to have found his calling in genre fiction. Fun but ultimately rather forgettable, not everything about Johannes Cabal the Necromancer works, but when something does, it works on a level that surpasses many of the functional encounters in the video games Howard cut his literary teeth on. Darkly whimsical and wonderfully absurd, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer makes for a good start to a series that could well be great. If the reveal on the last page of this first book is anything to go by, in fact - an emotional surprise that gives depth and context to all that's come before - the best truly is yet to come.

Here's hoping.

***

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

by Jonathan L. Howard

February 2010, Headline

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Stepping Out On Speculative Fiction

If you'll tolerate it, fair readers, a moment of your time.

You might have noticed something funny going on with The Speculative Scotsman these past few weeks. Perhaps, if you've been paying particularly close attention, you'll have noted an unusual lack... a lack where not so long ago there was an abundance. I've talked about Bioshock Infinite, reviewed Limbo and Splice, speculated rather more often than was perhaps wise about Guillermo del Toro's mysterious video-game venture (turns out he's working with THQ, so all was for naught anyway).

Do you see the missing link?

As well out with it than in, I guess: I have a confession to make. Go easy on me, gentle readers, for I have been unfaithful. I've been stepping out on speculative fiction. In literature, that is. A couple of weeks ago, after reading the first fifteen pages of a handful of appealing-looking books and finding my interest not at all piqued, I realised I must be suffering from a case of fantasy burnout. My first. And what a bitch it's been to shift.

Seven months and seventy books into 2010 - hey, that a lot for me! - I couldn't just go back to my idle old ways, much as I might have liked to. So I tried reading outside my comfort zone. My literary diet tends, I'm afraid, to consist of fantasy, fantasy, sci-fi, fantasy, fantasy, horror, fantasy, fantasy, and so on. These past few weeks, behind the iron curtain, I've tried to radically alter that pattern; the better to whet my appetite for the good stuff you all want to hear about. So I read Anne Holt's 1222, a Norwegian locked-room murder mystery coming from Corvus in December. I read The Newgate Jig, a Victorian crime thriller by Anne Featherstone Hodder's sister company John Murray are publishing in early September. I read The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk and The Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann. You'll hear about a few of these at a later date. The others I read not with potential coverage in mind, but to cleanse my literary palette.

And it worked. Slowly but surely, I found myself coming back to the beginning, rested, refreshed and rearing to go. A Dead Space novelisation, Martyr by B. K. Evenson, rather disappointed my renewed expectations, but between Lauren Beukes' incredible Zoo City and The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton (in readiness for The Evolutionary Void's release in a just a few, short weeks), I was won over to the cause of speculative fiction all over again.

Make no mistake: I'm ready, once more, to sink my critical teeth into some epic fantasy - either The King's Bastard or The Black Prism, I can't decide. In any event, the services you've come to expect from TSS will thus be resumed. Tomorrow, as a matter of fact.

So I stepped out on speculative fiction, and the time away, pleasant though indeed it was, only made me miss my genre of choice all the more. And now I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a bad idea to make a regular thing of this genre-neutral jaunt. Maybe every three or four months, a couple of books that don't meet the definition of speculative fiction would do wonders to reenergise my enthusiasm for the mode of storytelling I find myself so devoted to.

And I'm wondering: am I late to the party? Do you guys do something similar, from time to time? Take a little time out only to come back feeling like there's ass to be kicked? Or does the break leave you wishing your reading habits weren't so predictable? In short...

How often do you stray from speculative fiction?

Film Review: Splice

Now Cube was a lot of things, back in 1997: smart, creepy, fun and inventive. Clearly, it was a huge influence on Saw and its rather more extreme ilk. It gave a formative generation of SF fans something more stirring than dreary latter-day Star Trek spin-offs to root for. All that, and we got writer/director Vincenzo Natali into the bargain. But let's be perfectly frank. Cube was not... how shall I put this? Cube was not a terribly sophisticated film. Its charming successor, the criminally unloved Cypher, comes off better in that respect, though to be blunt, beyond its slick looks and Lucy Liu, it didn't truly have much going on under the bonnet either. And the less said about Nothing, a concept and little else besides, the better.

Yet through it all, the sense that Vincenzo Natali was capable of great things persisted. Given a more generous budget, perhaps, he would make his magnum opus; given a great script, or a better cast, or a story that could sustain itself from start to finish rather than fizzling out like a sparkler past its prime, Natali could - and surely would - come into his own.

Well, he's had seven years to mull over his next move, and Splice sure sounded like it could be all that Natali devotees had hoped for. With an award-winning cast, a plot synopsis positively laden with potential - not to mention cultural currency - better and cheaper effects technology, Splice could have been this year's surprise cult smash.

Could have been, I said.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Splice is the cautionary tale of two scientists who take the leap that's been on everyone's lips of late. Clive and Elsa are childless lovers who earn their keep manipulating genetics for the eventual betterment of mankind. When the pharmaceutical company who funds their research threatens to shut them down in order to proactively mollify a tabloid outrage, Clive and Elsa do not go quietly into the great goodnight. In an ill-considered push for the summit before everything falls apart, they run one last experiment: they splice human DNA with that of the medical monsters they have been creating in the erstwhile.

And it takes. Against all odds, the strands of DNA knit together and a new life form is born. Dren awakens to the world very rudely, and her gruesome birth from the viscera of an artificial womb following an impromptu right to life debate very much sets the tone for all Splice has to offer: blood spatter and an array of join-the-dots moral quandaries. Oh, a hot monster, because Dren, you see, ages at a conveniently accelerated rate. Because of... something.

Natali clearly hopes to have it both ways. He means to ask the Big Questions - to tackle the philosophical and psychological implications of human cloning, nature/nurture, child abuse, the breakdown of relationship - and in between times, to give lowbrow genre junkies their daily bread: sex, violence, violent sex and sexualised violence. What he ends up doing is shoehorning every notion he can conceive of in without giving any single one the time or distance to establish its place, its pathos. At least he has the good grace to punctuate each would-be ambiguity with some hearty dismemberment.

Splice has its moments, I do not deny, but what little beauty Natali's damp squib of a return to cinema can lay claim to is only ever skin deep. Dren is, in and of herself, a brilliant creation. A cleverly conceived and carefully crafted concept brought to life by a combination of impressive Giger-esque CG and prosthetics, and Delphine Chanéac, who dances as the disarmingly alluring young woman Dren becomes (that is when she's not killing cats). Chanéac is superb - she put me in mind of the creepy nurses from Silent Hill, and she's singularly the best thing in Splice.

Which is something of a surprise, given the presence of award-winning luminaries Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley. Sadly, there's an absolute lack of chemistry between them. I'll grant that they bring a certain sense of gravitas to the increasingly outrageous proceedings, and maybe that would have been a good thing if Splice had been half so profound as it wishes it were, but it's not: it's too self-serious, in fact, for its own good. That just doesn't play when you're making a movie that culminates in an encounter that can only hope to recall Species. I mean... Species. You can do better, Vincenzo Natali.

The Boss for 15/08/10

Week in, week out, if you look closely enough, there's almost always a theme to each installment of The BoSS. Last time around it was Arthur Conan Doyle. This week, weirdly, the world seems to want to get me caught up with a few classics! There's a reissue of Ursula K. LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest, to begin with, a copy of Never Let Me Go so that I can review the book before the movie comes out, and - would you believe it - an anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird come all the way from the great States.

And why not? It'll be good, I think, to get reacquainted with a few old books in the face of the constant stream of new fiction that comes through the door for review. I know a few bloggers have complained that we could do with looking backwards from time to time rather than forward, always forward. With that in mind, let me dedicate this week's edition of The BoSS to a certain literary squirrel-monger.

Course, I'm sure he'd rather a choice few nuts to feed the discriminating beast-legions with, but what can you do? Start a nut review blog and wait for the manufacturers to get in touch, of course!

Click through to read Meet the BoSS for an introduction and an explanation as to why you should care about the Bag o' Speculative Swag.

Read on for a sneak peek at some of the books - past, present and future - you can expect to see coverage of here on The Speculative Scotsman in the coming weeks and months.

***

Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
25/02/10 by Faber & Faber

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "In one of the strangest and most acclaimed novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewered version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life."

Commentary: It's being touted as this year's Children of Men, though only, I suspect, by people who haven't read the book. Mark Romanek's film looks, nevertheless, to be an outstanding adaptation of prize-winner Never Let Me Go, and I'm hoping to go back to the source in advance of the movie's wide release. I've read this before, but it's been long enough and I'm coming now from such a different place that I fully expect my returning experience of Kazuo Ishiguro's literary science fiction to be quite distinct from my original opinions.

Discord's Apple
by Carrie Vaughn

Release Details:

Published in the US on
06/07/10 by Tor

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "When Evie Walker goes home to spend time with her dying father, she discovers that his creaky old house in Hope’s Fort, Colorado, is not the only legacy she stands to inherit. Hidden behind the old basement door is a secret and magical storeroom, a place where wondrous treasures from myth and legend are kept safe until they are needed again. The magic of the storeroom prevents access to any who are not intended to use the items. But just because it has never been done does not mean it cannot be done.

"And there are certainly those who will give anything to find a way in.


"Evie must guard the storeroom against ancient and malicious forces, protecting the past and the future even as the present unravels around them. Old heroes and notorious villains alike will rise to fight on her side or to undermine her most desperate gambits. At stake is the fate of the world, and the prevention of nothing less than the apocalypse."

Commentary: Now I've never read Carrie Vaughn before, but I'm given to understand that the lady in question's made quite the name for herself with the Kitty Norville, Werewolf Talk-Show Host books (of which, incidentally, there's another, the eighth in the series, in fact, coming out alongside this). They strike me as a bit urban fantasy for my tastes, so I've left them well enough alone, but Discord's Apple is a whole other thing - sounds to me like Buffy the Vampire Slayer season one with a faerie twist - and Tor certainly believes in it, so. Safe to expect a review, I think.

To Kill A Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

 

Release Details:

Published in the US on
11/05/10 by Harper Perrenial

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel—a black man charged with the rape of a white girl: 'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

"Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice—but the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"One of the best-loved classics of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many dis-tinctions since its original publication in 1960. It has won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. It was also named the best novel of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. HarperCollins is proud to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication with this special hardcover edition."

Commentary: How can I never have read this classic? I've seen an old movie adaptation, in English class at high school I think, and I know the story blow-by-blow - it's virtually impossible not to given this book's legendary status. But finally, thanks to the wave of publicity that's greeted the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird's publication, I can remedy what must be one of my more outrageous literary failings. And I shall. It mightn't be high fantasy, thus hardly within the purview of The Speculative Scotsman, but to hell with restricting myself to stuff what has elves in. (NB: No offense to either elves and or elf-aficionados intended.)

As She Climbed Across the Table

by Jonathan Lethem

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

06/01/05 by Faber & Faber

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "What if your lover left you for nothing? Literally Nothing? From the author of Motherless Brooklyn, this is a strange, hilarious love story about a man, a woman, and the space between them. Physicist Alice Coombs has made a great discovery - a hole in the universe, a true nothingness she and her colleagues call 'Lack'. Professor Philip Engstrand has made his own breakthrough - he realises how much he loves Alice. Trouble is, Lack is a void with a personality - a void that utterly obsesses Philip's beloved. She's fallen out of love with Philip and in love with Lack."

Commentary: A few weeks ago, I heard that David Cronenberg would be adapting this baby for his next film. Now you're going to need a little history lesson here: I wrote my Honours dissertation on David Cronenberg. On Videodrome, in particular. He was one of my favourite directors in those days, and though the experience of studying his work left me none too keen to revisit old favourites, news of new Cronenberg always reignites the old passion. Thus, here we have As She Climbed Across the Table, which has to have perhaps the creepiest title of any book I've heard of.  No surprises here: I haven't read Lethem before, though I have occasionally investigated the possibility on Amazon. What better reason to take the bull by the horns is there than to get a heads-up on what Cronenberg's doing next?

Well, I suppose I can think of a few. But that's what brought me here, like it or lump it.

The Word for World is Forest

by Ursula K. LeGuin

Release Details:

Published in the US on

06/07/10 Tor

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty Yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters.

"Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retailiate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back."

Commentary: Umm... Avatar much? But I shouldn't. Though, well, I tend to suspect The Word for World is Forest is being reissued for precisely that reason: to capture the renewed interest in an old classic that was a by-product of the furor over that film's apparently rather striking similarities. (Gosh, that wasn't a good sentence --- ED) Was it a furor, anyway? One way or another, I've heard great things about this one, and I'm looking forward to sitting down with it of an evening to see if The Word for World is Forest really is all that, or just a thinly-veiled environmental parable. What with Ursula LeGuin's pedigree, I tend to suspect the former.

The Strain
by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Release Details:

Published in the UK
on 01/04/10 by Harper

Review Priority:

2 (Fair)

Plot Synopsis: "A plane lands at JFK and mysteriously goes dark, stopping in the middle of the runway for no apparent reason, all lights off, all doors sealed. The pilots cannot be raised. When the hatch above the wing finally clicks open, it soon becomes clear that everyone on board is dead - although there is no sign of any trauma or struggle. Ephraim Goodweather and his team from the Center for Disease Control must work quickly to establish the cause of this strange occurrence before panic spreads. The first thing they discover is that four of the victims are actually still alive. But that's the only good news. And when all two hundred corpses disappear from various morgues around the city on the same night, things very rapidly get worse. Soon Eph and a small band of helpers will find themselves battling to protect not only their own loved ones, but the whole city, against an ancient threat to humanity."

Commentary: Now I didn't actually get this for review - hence the low priority. I was in town last week and the typically swinging-in-the-wind pursuit of window-shopping charity outlets netted me The Strain. Which is kind of handy really, given that the sequel, The Fall, is coming out in September. I love me some Guillermo del Toro - excepting the Hellboy movies, of course (that is a given, right?) - so I'll get caught up for the sequel, I think. Though... I wonder, how much did del Toro actually have to do with these books? I would wager he had a story idea and sold it to Chuck Hogan - no doubt The Strain sold like gangbusters versus how it would have had del Toro's name not been featured so prominently. But I digress.

The King's Bastard
by Rowena Cory Daniels

Release Details:

Published in the UK
on 05/07/10 by Solaris

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "Only seven minutes younger than Rolencia's heir, Byren has never hungered for the throne. He laughs when a seer predicts that he will kill his twin. But the royal heir resents Byren's growing popularity. Across the land the untamed magic of the gods wells up out of the earth's heart. It sends exotic creatures to stalk the wintry nights and it twists men's minds, granting them terrible visions. Those so touched are sent to the Abbey to control their gift, or die. At King Rolen's court enemies plot to take his throne, even as secrets within his own household threaten to tear his family apart. Political intrigue and magic combine in this explosive first book in an exciting new fantasy trilogy."

Commentary: Now this, this I approve of. The King's Bastard is book one of King Rolen's Kin, a trilogy in the vein of Robin Hobb on a dark day - I hear - from the Aussie author behind The Last T'En trilogy being released by Solaris over three consecutive months. I've never heard of her before, but the appeal of gobbling up a complete trilogy in such a short time does rather appeal, I'll admit it. The sequel, The Uncrowned King, is already out, and the finale, The Usurper, is just weeks away. Actually, thinking of things that way, I guess I better damn well get on with it!

Skyoshock

Well, a guy can dream - and aren't dreams what made Rapture real (not really) in the first place?

It appears my borderline lunatic ravings about Guillermo del Toro potentially being involved in Irrational Games' next effort were all for naught; I was just tilting at windmills anyway. Del Toro isn't making a game with the creators of Bioshock after all. What he's working on remains to be seen. The ultra-secretive project the talented folks at Irrational have been keeping busy with since 2007, on the other hand - Icarus, as it's been known till now... that, there's been some news on.

To say there's been some news, in fact, is perhaps to understate the case. As of yesterday, we know perfectly well what Irrational Games are making. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you... Skyoshock.

Skyoshock, aka Bioshock Infinite.

What?

Quite frankly, this announcement absolutely baffles me. Irrational have gone on the record repeatedly since Bioshock's release to say they were working on something worlds apart, and having sister studio 2K Marin develop the disappointing sequel to the original game somewhat cemented the notion that Irrational would either be creating new IP or revisiting a classic property. But no. They're making Bioshock... in the sky... with (steampunk) diamonds. Transposing the Randian philosophy and retrograde aesthetic of that modern classic to a floating wartime flotilla.

Rapture, meet Columbia.

Well, if anyone can pull it off, I believe Ken Levine can. But I'd been hoping, I confess, for something rather more daring than what the internet has already taken to calling Skyoshock.

One way or another, we won't know for sure what Bioshock Infinite truly is until closer to its projected release in 2012. Perhaps between now and then Irrational can convince their marketing gurus that slapping the Bioshock brand (such as it is) on the box is only going to lead to unrealistic expectations and unnecessary confusion. Perhaps two years is long enough that doing so will prove more harmful than helpful. Please, 2K Games: give this world room to breathe.

A guy can dream, right?