Count Zero: The Sprawl Trilogy 02 by William Gibson

From The Week of April 25, 2010

I've described before how difficult it is for sequels to live up to their progenitors. This is doubly true in the case of Count Zero which must follow a classic of 20th century literature. Though the books have no characters in common, the successor to Neuromancer holds up adequately well. It's only real crime is that it isn't Neuromancer.

While the first novel focused on Case, the hacker, and Molly, his bodyguard, Count Zero's narrative is divvied up between three primary characters, each of whom possess an important fragment of the plot. Bobby, a Console Cowboy like Case, is essentially a lesser version of Neuromancer's antihero, carrying out odd jobs while exposing us to the commercialized sprawl of the future United States. After he is hired to run a piece of code, Bobby has a near-death experience in the Matrix which leads him to conclude that there is something out there in the shared hallucination of this future Internet, something big. Turner, a corporate mercenary who specializes in helping important employees of various companies defect to their competitors, is recuperating in Mexico from a mission that went awry. He's approached to execute one of his most daring jobs yet, fetching from a corporate fortress in the Arizona desert, a top scientist developing a new link between humans the Matrix, one which will change the world forever. Marly, the disgraced and now one-time operator of an art gallery in Paris, is at loose ends when, out of the blue, she is hired by one of the world's richest men to help him find pieces of art which keep appearing on Earth. Though Marly accepts the job and initially performs her task with admirable diligence, she soon realizes that her boss is not all he claims to be. As these three narratives converge, we realize that there are forces at play in the world that have made pawns of our protagonists, forces that are completely beyond their ability to control. They must ride the wave of Fate and hope, in some small way, to affect the outcome in their favor.

Count Zero is, in some ways, a maturer work than Neuromancer. It has a more complex narrative structure which introduces us to secondary characters who are better fleshed out than the gallery of madmen who filled these roles in Neuromancer. But this advantage cannot make up for Count Zero's lack of shock and awe. Neuromancer blew the mind with its world unlike any other, a world somehow both fantastic and incredibly dirty and real. In merely continuing with that same world, Count Zero is unable to claim the same uniqueness. It must simply to continue along a path with which we are already familiar. It is artfully done, but it is not revolutionary. Not that I've set the bar very high or anything... (3/5 Stars)

Neuromancer: The Sprawl Trilogy 01 by William Gibson

From The Week of April 25, 2010

Though Richard K. Morgan has come close to overtaking him in my literary affections, Mr. Gibson will forever be my favorite author. He has penned other stories of quality -- I reserve particular affection for Idoru --, but Neuromancer is Mr. Gibson at the pinnacle of his powers. My favorite author's best book... You know where this is headed, don't you?

In a dystopian Earth of the 22nd century, in which corporate interests have thoroughly undermined the power of the traditional nation state, everything is for sale. Case is a particularly talented computer hacker who operates within the Matrix, a virtual-reality Internet of the future in which single humans cohabit with megalithic corporations to create billions of instantaneous interactions across a synergistic landscape. Case is much more than just a participant in his collective hallucination; he is a Console Cowboy, a mercenary and a thief of information, a criminal willing to work for the highest bidder. For it's not just the thrill of the job that keeps him alive; it's the exhilaration of leaving behind the limitations of mortal flesh and surfing out into the sea of data, becoming there an immortal mind, thoughts wrapped inside an identity unchained from human bondage. This creates in Case an arrogance which eventually catches up to him in a Tennessee hotel where his employers, from whom he had cockily stolen money, inject him with a poison that burns away his brain's ability to reach the Matrix. His talent gone and his future prospects reduced to petty drug deals, Case is almost out of options when the hand of Fate reaches down and plucks him out of the mud, choosing him for a mission that will change his world forever. True, he'll have to work for and alongside madmen to fulfil his new contract, but if, against all the odds, he succeeds, he might just be freer and wiser than the man he was before the Tennessee hotel.

Neuromancer is not just wonderfully and chaotically plotted, its 1984 publication gave birth to an entire genre of science fiction (Cyberpunk). It gave us novels and video games. It coined terms like Cyberspace which entered the common parlance after Neuromancer. More than that, it predicted, by a decade and a half, the Internet which has come to dominate so much of our existence. And though Mr. Gibson's vision of a virtual internet hasn't yet come to fruition, it is so ubiquitous, so much a conduit of our information flow, that Mr. Gibson's dream is inevitable.

Despite the passage of a quarter century, Neuromancer, unlike many other near-future pieces of science fiction, hardly feels dated. True, the dominance of Japanese techno-culture feels a bit pre-21st century; what's more, the nation state's demise to the corporation as societal organizer and law-giver has a tinge of overwrought cynicism about it, but these are tiny quibbles in a novel that beats back the test of time by being ahead of its time. From feminism, to the ethics of cloning and personal servitude, to the rise of artificial intelligences, there's something in Neuromancer for everyone. I'm both saddened and relieved that there has never been a film. It would be venerate and cheapen this unrivaled work of future fiction.

For those of us who consider writing their calling, there will always be work that leaves us with an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. Unless one is supremely blinded by an arrogant sense of superiority, this experience is a rite of passage which causes us to question our own abilities. What is my voice? What do I want to say with it? And how elegant will I be with my words? While in this questing state, the skill and grace of the masters will seem as distant as the countless, glittering suns in our sky. But if we don't dream, if we don't try, we will never be all of what we could be. Mr. Gibson is my glittering sun. And though I hold this hope to my heart, I don't imagine I, or many others, will ever look upon him as an equal. (5/5 Stars, but really, what's the point of rating it...)

Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Goldinge

From The Week of April 25, 2010

Though Memoirs Of A Geisha is fiction, it's extemporaneous structure, its wonderful narration, and its poignant characters leave me no choice but to believe that some measure of this remarkable story is true. The ring of authenticity may emanate from the retired geisha Mr. Golding interviewed for this book, or it may come from the author's inherent skill. In the end, it matters not. It feels real and, for fiction, that is a rare treat.

Mr. Golding's story concerns the transformation of a young, poor, Japanese girl into a powerful, exquisite geisha, all set against an early 20th century Japan ramping up to the Second World War. The sting of Nitta's impoverished childhood stays with us as we watch, first-hand, the dissolution of her family and her adoption into a training house for geisha, first as a servant and later as a young girl of note. Mr. Golding captures the acuteness of the rivalries that spring up among the girls. Some occur as a result of natural jealousy, spite given form, while others are artificially provoked by the necessities of hierarchical, geisha society where the successful are cruel to the new in order to maintain their status as the pinnacle. As the story evolves and Nitta grows into her own powers, we see how so much of the rivalries and feuds are a consequence of the strictures of geisha society, how their freedoms are simultaneously numerous and narrow, how their behavior is governed and exquisite. In such a confining environment, where the whole of ones world is a performance within the strata of a top-down society, feuds may be all one has, especially when age fades ones beauty and sends men in search for the newest, freshest girl.

Events in Memoirs Of A Geisha are told from well after the fact by a Nitta in her 70s who, in a series of interviews granted to the fictionalized translator of this book, lays out her life's story in intimate detail. The benefit of hindsight casts a quiet glow over the Japan of Nitta's youth, a Japan that drives itself so deeply into the deprivations of WWII that it loses much of its pre-war traditionalism which held the culture in stasis for so long. As the story of a woman's exceptional life, Mr. Golding has penned a success. But it's how his etchings of Japan bring that country to life, infusing his story with its bittersweet omnipresence, that his tale becomes art.(4/5 Stars)

Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell

From The Week of April 25, 2010

Though there is, at the heart of Lone Survivor, a fascinating question about ethics in a time of war, and how single decisions can change the lives of ones friends, that lesson is all but choked out by Mr. Luttrell's repellent blend of Christian moralizing and red-blooded patriotism.

Marcus Luttrell, a decorated Navy SEAL, was part of a team tasked to find and eliminate Mohammad Ismail, a Taliban-in-Afghanistan commander. While trekking through the mountains in search of Ismail, Luttrell and his team stumbled across some Afghani goat herders who recognized the SEALS as Americans. Given that the goat herders, if left to go free, could, with their superior knowledge of the terrain, locate and inform the local Taliban of the American presence, letting them live posed a significant danger to both the mission and to the lives of the SEALS. The team elected to take a vote on what to do, let the goat herders go free and trust in their decency and in the American mission in Afghanistan, or kill the goat herders against the Rules of Engagement and continue on with the mission knowing that it had not been jeopardized? According to Mr. Luttrell, it was his vote that swung the decision in favor of releasing the goat herders, a decision which would result in dire consequences for Mr. Luttrell and his team.

What a remarkable dilemma... To cross half the world in service of ones country, to navigate through foreign territory on a covert mission to kill the enemy, to encounter innocents by accident and to know that, thanks to barriers in language and culture there'd be no way to communicate, to know that safety could be found in killing but that righteousness could be found in mercy... It is a problem worthy of ancient Greek philosophers.

What is the value of a human life? Does one value the life of a comrade over the life of a stranger? Can a mission ever matter more than the lives of innocents? These are valid questions Mr. Luttrell would have been well-advised to devote himself to. And yet these ethical nuances are subsumed by the understandable agonies Mr. Luttrell endured, knowing that his choice doomed his companions, and the American proselytizing he indulges in as he justifies the deaths of his friends in the broader context of the justness of the War on Terror. This choice, reflecting Mr. Luttrell's inability to escape the biases of his nationality and his training, dooms what could have been an exceptional novel and a modern parable. (2/5 Stars)

Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton

From The Week of April 25, 2010

For the most part, our world has little in common with the world of a hundred years ago. Planes, computers, cars, robots, vacuum cleaners, particle accelerators, space shuttles, submarines... The list of 20th century innovations is endless. And so it's easy to forget that some people still live in a world of horses and buggies, shamans and shepherds. When now collides with then, which wins out? In Horse Soldiers, a chronicle of the first American missions to oust the Afghani Taliban after the 9/11 attacks, now may win the battles, but then may well take the war.

It is impossible to imagine a starker clash of civilizations than that which came together in Afghanistan after 9/11. CIA operatives, trained for insurgency, supported by the best in American air power, kept communicable by satellite phones and tracked 24/7 by GPS satellites, joined forces with the Northern Alliance, a collection of horse-born tribesmen, to uproot the Taliban. Religious zealots birthed from fundamentalist, Islamist schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban had risen to power in 1996, sweeping away what it saw as a corrupt state and replacing it with a regime which sought to re-create, in the 20th century, the 7th century world of the Prophet Mohammed. No technology, no idolatry, no electricity, no skyscrapers, no telephones... Perfect religious adherence in a world as it ought to be. Known to have given shelter to Osama Bin Laden, and the perpetrators of the senseless and incalculable destruction of the two, 1500-year-old Buddha statues, the Taliban in Afghanistan was the most logical country in which to respond to 9/11. And so these special operatives poured into a country in the process of being degraded into the Middle Ages and, with their guns and their bombs, they helped the Northern Alliance force the Taliban into numerous retreats designed to encourage the Afghanistan people to rise up against their zealous rulers.

Though Mr. Stanton spends considerable time depicting the incredulity of American soldiers calling in bomb strikes with satellite phones while on horseback, Horse Soldiers ultimately concerns the new face of war, insurgencies backed by small, supremely trained soldiers, armed with the latest technology. Far more flexible than mechanized armies, these infiltrators can be anywhere, can blend into any population, and, with a single command, call in a bomb strike on the enemy. Though the infiltrator is far more vulnerable to reprisal when caught -- after all, he doesn't have a thousand soldiers and a hundred tanks next to him --, the benefits of excellent intelligence and swift action surely outweigh the costs of transporting whole armies halfway across the world to fight in a country no modern army has ever conquered, against an enemy who can't be found by conventional weapons. Mr. Stanton points out that the program that authorized the CIA operatives to execute this plan in Afghanistan cost the American taxpayer but a tiny fraction of the overall war in Afghanistan. And who knows; had the program continued in lieu of a war which devastated that pitiable nation, perhaps local sentiment would be more concretely with the West.

Horse Soldiers tells the story of these American infiltrators and their remarkable achievements, but it also speaks to the lessons we should learn about war. The two narratives come together to entertain and edify. (4/5 Stars)

The Nuclear Jihadist by Douglas Frantz

From The Week of April 25, 2010

Mr. Frantz book is a punch to the guts. I'm glad I read it alone for I'm certain that anyone who overheard my groans, as I consumed each successive chapter, would have assumed I was about to die. But though the body will surely want to wind up in the fetal position while experiencing this devastating reconstruction of how a morally bankrupted, Pakistani scientist used stolen materials and intellectual property to build a nuclear program for his country, that same body will be well-served by sticking with the tale. It has a great deal to teach us about the workings of the modern world.

If asked to compile a list of the world's most destabilizing people, in the last 30 years, the name of A. Q. Khan might not often find its way into the top ten, eclipsed as he would be by dictators with flashier and bloodier resumes. But as The Nuclear Jihadist argues, no one man has done more to proliferate nuclear technology into the hands of terrorists and criminals than Khan. Considered by Pakistan to be a national treasure, Khan became the father of that country's nuclear weapons program after leveraging stolen, European secrets into a mandate from the Zilfikar Bhutto administration to create a weapons program that would rival India's own. Why did Pakistan trust in such a duplicitous scientist? Desperation, brought about by India's 1974 Smiling Buddha test which declared India a nuclear power. Desperate to punch its own weight with its secular sibling, Pakistan's government gave Khan the keys to the kingdom. In the early 1980s, they were rewarded for their faith and their funds when Khan's lab was able to produce weapons-grade uranium, launching Pakistan into the nuclear family of nations. But while this restored equilibrium -- as Pakistan saw it -- to the relationship between Pakistan and India, this was only the beginning of Khan's ambitions.

Was it profit or ideology that caused A. Q. Khan to sell on nuclear bomb kits to Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea? Kits filled with materials and secrets... Kits filled with the end of the world as we know it. In the end, it doesn't matter what motivated the scientist, only that he did it and made the world a far more dangerous place for it.

His country may consider him a hero for seemingly liberating Pakistan from the restraints of the western democracies seeking to moderate it, but if these are the heroes celebrated by the East, than there is more of a gulf between the two halves of our world than even I thought. The Nuclear Jihadist may cover the state of US/Pakistan relations, the dirty dealings that have marked the last 30 years between the two nations, but the biography of A. Q. Khan that lies at the heart of this tale devastates and sickens. How could the Europeans have been so lax with their secrets? One mistake, one man not properly vetted and the world is reduced to this.

And that is The Nuclear Jihadist's ultimate lesson, that no secret is ever safe. It is the nature of bureaucracies that errors will be made, some small and some colossal. If we have technology of this sort in the world, then we must eventually expect it to wind up in the hands of terrorists because it's simply impossible to be 100 percent right about everything all the time. Mistakes will always be made. It's what we do about those mistakes that may mean the difference between the life and death of our species. An excellent and disturbing piece of journalism. (4/5 Stars)

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

From The Week of April 18, 2010

In another life, I can well imagine Ms. Vowell distilling her playful brand of political and cultural satire into a successful stand-up routine. She might take the stage with her collection of cultural curios, acquired through her investigative travels, and have the audience in snickers as she reveales the origins of the bizarre. In this life, however, Ms. Vowell has channeled her considerable talents towards literature and journalism and, for us bibliophiles who enjoy our history with a healthy side of sarcastic wit, we are the better for it.

The Wordy Shipmates is primarily an accounting of the events that rippled out from John Winthrop's decision to, in 1630, lead a flock of British emigrants to the Massachusetts Bay colony where, as Puritans, they would be free to practice their religion, safe from the persecution of their anti-Puritan king, Charles I. In many ways, this mission proved to be fateful for the future United States of America. It not only prepared the ground for that nation's strong, Protestant roots to take hold, it established the sense of American exceptionalism, the City Upon a Hill, which would come to influence American policy in the centuries to come. Ms. Vowell has a particularly good eye for small, telling details, reconstructing here the lists of supplies the adventurers stored about their wooden ships for the months-long journey across the temperamental Atlantic. She lavishes her attentions upon the many characters who sailed with Winthrop, the devoted zealots to the opportunistic hedonists, recreating an amusing tapestry of what those founding colonists might have been like. She saves her most devastating wit for the theological battles fought out between Winthrop and the liberal, for his times, Roger Williams, the reformed Baptist and later founder of Rhode Island. The evidence of the extent to which their disagreements have been mirrored through the subsequent generations of American thought and belief is startling and more than a bit tragic.

There's so much here to enjoy, from the descriptions of life in the new colonies, to the religious and societal conditions that instigated the colonists' flight from England. What stands out most, however, is the extent to which the virtuousness of extremism is determined by history. By all accounts, the Winthrop emigrants were no different than any desperate separatists who attempt to forego civilization in the hope of giving birth to a newer, fairer society in the wild. From the vantage point of civilization in the 21st century, we view such people as anti-social non-conformists who have likely sadly fallen under the sway of some half-mad prophet. And yet these wayward souls are Ms. Vowell's protagonists. More than that, they are the shapers of the future United States, non-conformists who've handed down their legacy of religion smashing up against religious freedom, stirred up with a healthy distrust of the State. This is a wonderful mishmash of history, culture, and biography, shot through with thick veins of comedy. I devoured it. (4/5 Stars)

Red Moon Rising by Matthew Brzezinski

From The Week of April 18, 2010

Though it has taken some time to come to fruition, President Eisenhower's 1959 warning of the rise of the military complex has proven to be prophetic. The United States, a country which began its time as a republic without a standing army is now an empire which uses the credit cards of Asian bankers to pay for a global military which, each year, costs hundreds of billions of dollars to fund. It is, as we have seen in recent years, an unsustainable price to be paid in the name of freedom, not freedom itself. Developing weapons only encourages those who are afraid of you to develop their own weapons capable of combating yours which gets you to build better weapons and on and on it goes, a cycle feeding upon itself until its inevitable collapse from lack of available funds. Though, as of this writing, that frightening day of reckoning is yet in the future, Mr. Brzezinski's account of how it began gives us little hope that the cycle will end in happiness. He has written here a vivid portrait of how lies accumulate on top of lies, and how posturing begets posturing to create one of the largest and strangest arms races in human history. There is but one useful side-effect to this buildup, good science. And it is that which Mr. Brzezinski focuses on in Red Moon Rising, a chronicle of the 1950s sspace race which came to define the last half of the 20th century.

Red Moon Rising recounts the post WWII rocket programs of the only two superpowers left on Earth, the US and the USSR. From the German rocketeers who jump-started them, to the brilliant, native scientists who elevated them, Mr. Brzezinski allows us to be witnesses at the dawn of modern technology, a moment so singular that it captured, as its designers and funders had hoped, the imagination of a world. Sputnik, that solitary, harmless satellite which pinged its way around a planet, declaring with each rotation the beginning of the arms race. For while Sputnik itself may not have been weaponized, its significance was not lost on the United States. The Russians had the capability of launching a rocket capable of delivering a payload anywhere in the world. And in that moment of realization, the national security state was born. If an enemy could launch an attack from anywhere, without the slow and obvious accumulation of troops along the border, then how could anyone be safe?

Bigger rockets, rockets capable of delivering the same or more destruction upon any country which would dare to launch such an attack, rockets capable of mutually assured destruction. And so, at immense cost, it was done. And those programs begot other programs, and those programs yet more programs, as rockets became weapons and weapons became better weapons until the USSR was spent out of existence by American capitalism. After all, what do nice, shiny weapons mean to a country that can't feed itself?

Mr. Brzezinski has put together a well-researched history of the moment the space race began, and how the space race became an arms race and how that arms race inevitably leads to bankruptcy. Along the way, we meet the giants of rocketry, men who, it isn't a stretch to say, made possible the satellite-dependent world we have today. Yes, this book appeals to my fascination with folly which predisposes me to like it. But anyone even mildly interested in how the pushing of a boulder down a mountainside can create an avalanche will find Red Moon Rising engrossing and sobering. (5/5 Stars)

The Last Hawk: The Saga Of The Skolian Empire 03 by Catherine Asaro

From The Week of April 18, 2010

This stand-alone novel in The Saga of The Scolian Empire is by far its most fascinating and thoughtful entry. Though it does not forego Ms. Asaro's particular brand of science-fiction romance, its plot and its inventive world are, this time, worthy counterweights and strong components in a successful novel.

Kelric, another of Sauscony's brothers, as well as a fellow Jagernaut -- an elite fighter pilot --, crash-lands on a Scolian colony which has been, for some time now, lost to the rest of the galaxy. Though Coba, the world in question, has preserved some of the Scolian customs, its people have lost the ability to travel to the stars, confining themselves to a world divvied up into an array of fiefdoms governed by matriarchal, noble houses. Such a set up is primed for conflict, wars both numerous and brutal. Instead of armed combat,however, a complex game of dice, reminiscent of chess, has developed to take its place. The strength of a noble house is determined by the strength of its quis players. If its quis players are superior, then it succeeds in growing in stature, either through good acquisitions of assets, or by annexing other houses. Kelric, who is unceremoniously dumped into this incomprehensible stew, has his only way home taken away from him before he is imprisoned. But during his time on Coba, his affinity for Quis comes to light and he gradually wins the respect, if not the trust, of his keepers. The only problem is he might be too good at this game of houses, a variable which may throw an ugly wrench into the workings of a here-to-for stable world.

Ms. Asaro can frustrate, but The Last Hawk proves that, when she concentrates her powers upon building a diverse and nuanced world, she can sit with comfort at the same table as many of science fiction's leading lights. There's real pathos in Kelric, real sadness and misery which is balanced by his ever-diminishing hope for the future. There are heroes here, but they are fleshed out by logical self-interest in a way not apparent in her first two books. This is nicely and neatly done. (4/5 Stars)

The Radiant Seas: The Saga Of The Skolian Empire 02 by Catherine Asaro

From The Week of April 18, 2010

Though most sequels disappoint, they are also an opportunity for a new author to refine his or her craft and to eliminate the inevitable errors of literary adolescence. But though The Radiant Seas has a potent second half, the novel has convinced me that this series from Ms. Asaro will never advance beyond a kind of 21st century version of the 19th century, English, Gothic novel. Ms. Asaro has considerable talent; her science is interesting; her world is enjoyable if cliched. But though all the pieces are in place, there's no ambition to be more than a dressed-up love story cloaked in grandeur.

The doom that was always going to befall Sauscony Valdoria's plan to be left alone by the universe crashes home in The Radiant Seas, scattering her hopes for the future far and wide. But though Valdoria is clearly stunned by recent developments, both personal and galactic, she recovers to rally her people in what she hopes to be a war to end all wars. She will do what others who've come before her have failed to do, to throw the dice high and see where they land in an all-out gamble for the future. And if it doesn't work out, well, the pain of the loss won't last long because she'll be dead and it won't much matter anymore.

Valdoria's general bad-assedness completely carries this novel. Her fury is a rich concoction made from mother's pain and wounded pride. Her resolve is nearly a character unto itself as it propels the series' primary heroine through to a destiny that's been a long time in coming. But if Valdoria is the novel's strength, its other protagonists fail to meet her mark. Kurj, the Scolian ruler and brother to Sauscony,is a hackneyed reworking of Darth Vader while Althor, another of her brothers portrayed here, is straight out of central casting for boy scouts. No, Ms. Asaro does not construct dynamic characters, choosing rather to hurl them together at tremendous speeds and see what is smashed out of them. And though their suffering ought to provoke empathy, that's rather difficult when you can't help but flip the page in hopes that you're at the next chapter and a change in P.O.V.

But through its flaws, there is still meat on this bone. The war is well-plotted, well-executed and deeply satisfying, paying off much of Primary Inversion's promise. But the hackneyed world got to me here and I doubt I'll continue beyond the next novel. (2/5 Stars)

Primary Inversion: The Saga Of The Skolian Empire 01 by Catherine Asaro

From The Week of April 18, 2010

Ms. Asaro, a trained physicist, has given birth to, in Primary Inversion, a compelling, science-fiction universe which, while too clearly divided between good and evil, light and dark, is fascinating and poetic. Though Ms. Asaro's authorship will never win her literary acclaim, she has fused a natural gift for romance together with her understanding of physics to create an amalgam which entertains. And given that this is likely what its audience wants from it, it is a good servant.

In a future galaxy dominated by three major factions, the Scolian Imperium, ruled by empaths, the Eubian Concord, commanded by sadists, and the humans from Earth who occupy neutral, democratic ground between the two, polarized empires. Our heroine is a Scolian empath, an elite fighter pilot and sister to the Scolian ruler, who uses the camaraderie of her squadron to shield herself from a traumatic past at the hands of the Eubians. But after encountering the son and heir to the Eubian throne on a neutral world, and after realizing he holds a secret that could permanently shift the balance of power between the two warring empires, Sauscony Valdoria ultimately chooses to give aid to a man she's trained to hate, knowing that doing so may cost her her own life.

Primary Inversion is divided into three major sections, each concerning Valdoria. The first describes her encounter with the Eubian heir and her realization of his secret. While this lays down the story's main plot, "girl meets boy, boy and girl fall helplessly in love, boy and girl do what it takes to be together, even defying sanction from their people," it's far too unoriginal to be satisfying. Ms. Asaro might as well call the planet upon which the two meet Verona and have done. The second section, however, finds Ms. Asaro at her best, as Valdoria recovers from a battle which nearly took her life by being forced onto shore leave against her will. Cut off from the squadron she depends on for emotional support, Valdoria struggles with her past and must come to some resolution about it before she can move forward with her duties and the Eubian heir who complicates them. Atmospheric, moody, quiet, dark... Excellent work. And then our concluding third section brings us full circle, back to the heir and Valdoria's solution to a new reality in which her brother, the Scolian ruler, has captured him. Valdoria earns her heroine credits here, allowing the book to conclude with unexpected thoughtfulness. A cliche start nearly ruins the piece, but a strong, redemptive finish restores it to a satisfying read.

Finally, though the book's plot primarily concerns the love interest here, Ms. Asaro does not spare the science of her fiction. Though much of what she bases her universe on is highly speculative, it is at least tangentially linked to theoretical models that have been discussed in academics. Ms. Asaro stretches her artistic license to the breaking point in the utilization of said science, but knowing that it is grounded in some semblance of theory grants it an authority other, speculative stories lack. All in all, something for everyone, but its unevenness dooms any aspirations for more. (3/5 Stars)

Mrs. Adams In Winter by Michael O'Brien

From The Week of April 11, 2010

If Mrs. Adams In Winter was no more than the chronicle of the first and only foreign-born First Lady of the United States, it would be an engaging portrait of an interesting woman navigating her way through one of the most bellicose periods in European history. But Mr. O'Brien widens the scope of this account from the mere facts about his subject, zooming out so that he might capture a snapshot of history which proves to be as edifying as Mrs. Adams is interesting.

The core of Mrs. Adams In Winter concerns a remarkable journey executed by Louisa Adams, the daughter-in-law of John Adams, from the court of Czar Alexander at St. Petersburg to Paris, France, during the winter of 1815. This she managed without support from her husband, whom she intended to meet in Paris, nor any other adult member of her family. She had with her only servants and the questionable loyalty of a single soldier who she hired onto the journey after realizing they shared a common destination. It would be difficult enough to cross Russia in the winter in modern convenience. Imagine then traveling by wagon, through a country not yet marked out with adequate roads, through the chill of ice and snow, with no allies to rely on and no one to call for help. Then imagine doing all this while crossing a Europe suffering the aftershocks of the Congress at Vienna which re-drew the map of Europe after it had been thrown into chaos by Napoleonic conquest. And now perhaps you can imagine why this brave woman and her wintery feat drew the attention of an author worthy of recounting it.

Sandwiching the journey itself are descriptions of the countries through which Mrs. Adams travelled, along with their rulers and their customs. The aristocracies with which Mrs. Adams was familiar are artfully drawn, as is the portrait of our primary subject who, despite her many successes and strengths, evinces a loneliness that is naked on the page. There's a stoic sadness here that is shared by Mrs. Adams and the territory through which she ventures, a kind of post-war, melancholic silence in which there is room to ask why: why war, why suffering, why is life the way it is... This work will not inspire sunny thoughts, but its heroine is admirable in the face of all that she confronts, projecting a quiet strength that connects with us across all the decades. A story that is much more than the sum of its parts. (4/5 Stars)

Five Nights In London by John Lukacs

From The Week of April 11, 2010

Though I tend to steer clear of majisterial accounts of great events, Five Days In London successfully seduced me with its intriguing premise, that, during five days in May 1940, Winston Churchill and Lord Halifax represented two very different views of how the Second World War should be fought. Churchill believed in fighting on, no matter the cost, while Halifax sided with the appeasers of the German chancellor. Mr. Lukacs argues that, had Churchill not been victorious in setting British policy during these vital five days, Halifax would have prevailed, only to set up an eventual betrayal of Britain by Hitler which would have lead to subjugation of Europe and perhaps the rest of the world by the Nazis. It is a convincing argument and it is told with admirable clarity and brevity.

It is my view that statesmen do not win wars; soldiers win wars. Leadership matters; organization matters; policy matters, but they wouldn't make a bit of difference if soldiers refused to fight, if soldiers did not believe in the cause. And so I am reluctant to venerate men like Churchill who already have all the admirers they will ever need. And yet even I cannot deny that these five days may have changed history. Most soldiers do not wish to throw away their lives needlessly. If offered the alternative of not fighting, they would probably accept it. Had Halifax won his argument with Churchill and instigated an appeasement policy, there might have been relief in Britain, relief which would have eventuated in horror when Hitler betrayed them as he had so many before them. It's hard to say. But this is at the core of what makes speculative histories like these so thrilling. It is the fascination of the counterfactual, the path not taken, and Mr. Lukacs does not disappoint. (3/5 Stars)

The Alamo by John Myers Myers

From The Week of April 11, 2010

This particularly lyrical account of the fall of the Alamo is an excellent read which I expected to suffer more from being originally published some 70 years ago. Though Mr. Myers does not have the benefit of our hindsight in his account, that hardly matters to the Alamo which must be ranked on any list of the most important battles in American history. For perhaps only Lexington and Concord did more to shape a nation. Though the Alamo eventually fell to forces generalled by Santa Anna, a particularly tyrannical Mexican leader, the defenders of that fortress exacted such a toll on Santa Anna's forces that, when they were then forced to engage with Sam Houston's army in the Battle of San Jacinto, they were soundly defeated and forever expelled from land soon to belong to the state of Texas.

Though Mr. Myers covers the battle in detail, particularly the deprivations of the soldiers manning the Alamo and the hopelessness of their position, successfully haunting the reader with the sheer desperation of those few, blood-soaked days, The Alamo especially shines as a chronicle of the lead-up to the Alamo, both in its vivid portrayal of the belligerents who fought that deadly engagement and the politics which instigated it. We learn as much about the tragic Mexicans as we do the martyrdom of the defenders, with an extra helping of attention saved for Santa Anna who seems to have done his singlehanded best to plunge his fledgling nation into political ruin. This is exemplified by the fact that, in a twenty year span, in the midst of the 19th century, Mexico fought four separate wars under ten different presidential administrations. Though Mr. Myers only touches on this chaos, his portrayal of Mexican leadership during this time foretells an ugly century for that cursed country.

The Alamo is about more than a battle; it's about people, people with agendas, with ambitions, with moralities that drive them to immense sacrifice. It will not fail to provoke a thoughtful rumination on a distant and formative time. (4/5 Stars)

Cromwell: Our Chief Of Men by Antonia Fraser

From The Week of April 11, 2010

This is a breathtakingly boring account of what ought to be one of the most fascinating figures in the whole of British history. Unfortunately, Ms. Fraser does her level best to choke the life out of Oliver Cromwell's life story, failing to animate a man who might have done as much to change the eventual trajectory of his country as Alfred I, the first king of England. Clocking in at 1,040 pages, this stuffy chronicle could have had 700 pages easily cut without shirking any worthwhile details.

There is room within historical literature for works that are scholarly and popular. I understand that the former tend to run long in an effort to exhaustively research the subject in hopes of authoring a conclusive work, while the latter favor a more narrative portrayal which inevitably falls short on a few details. I understand the former must be authoritative works of our history, works that take no license with the truth whatsoever, but do they have to be so bloody dry?! Works like this from Ms. Fraser will inevitably give rise to popular, entertaining histories out of sheer frustration with the boredom. Surely some things can be cut so that those of us genuinely interested in the past don't come away yawning from the sheer pointlessness of it all.

Maybe I am spoiled by narrative history. Nonetheless, there must be a better way. Oliver Cromwell defied a king, executed him, and then created a constitutional republic in a 17th century Europe dominated by monarchies. He birthed this republic 120 years before American colonists would do the same. And Ms. Fraser's exactitude has reduced that achievement to mere words on the page. I would've been better served reading Oliver Cromwell's Wikipedia entry than this exercise in Chinese Water Torture. (1/5 Stars)

The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer

From The Week of April 04, 2010

This is a tightly told account of the last Khan of Mongolia, Baron Ungern-sternberg, portrayed by Mr. Palmer as a tortured soul who wound up inflicting as many cruelties upon the Mongolians he claimed to command than he did the Chinese he hoped to drive off, or the Bolsheviks he clearly despises. It is difficult to imagine a life more drenched in blood. And yet as we learn more and more about what drives humanity, Sternberg's barbarism can start to be understood.

Our formative experiences set the tone for the rest of our lives. If we experience cruelty at the hands of those from whom we are meant to receive love and tenderness, then the empathy that helps us to live in society is never nurtured, never allowed to flourish. What is a human without empathy? Someone who never feels the pain of inflicting pain. And people who do not feel pain when they inflict pain are people who, sadly, will never find their way to compassion. Though Sternberg's nobleman's upbringing in Russia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was infinitely more comfortable than that experienced by most of his countrymen, his isolation was so profound, his household so cold, that he turned to historical figures for companionship and purpose. Having discovered a link between his family and that of Genghis Khan, and having steeled himself in the Imperial Russian army's fight against the Reds, Sternberg was a disaster waiting to happen. His alienating upbringing having never taught him kindness and having felt the sting of military defeat at the hands of his enemies, he seems to have drawn on this historical link to one of history's greatest generals and used it to fuel a second chapter in his life, fleeing to Mongolia where his attempts to thrust out the Chinese from Genghis Khan's homeland rallied the Mongolians to his banner, at aleast for a little while. But eventually, Sternberg's flawed personality and the insurmountable odds he and his people faced would tell and his movement would die right around the time the Bolshevik firing squad finished off the last Khan of Mongolia.

This is an excellent book about a difficult subject. Mr. Palmer faced a particularly difficult challenge, trying to explain the actions of a madman who seems to have gone out of his way to be ruthless and cruel. And though Mr. Palmer only partially succeeds, these are flaws attributable more to the inscrutability of his subject, not to any failing on the part of Sternberg's biographer. For how dark the story, this is an oddly powerful book which conveys the bleakness of a life lived without the nourishment of love. (3/5 Stars)

Woken Furies: Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy 03 by Richard K. Morgan

From The Week of April 04, 2010

Though Broken Angels's issues weren't exclusive to Takeshi Kovacs' soullessness, I see now, fresh off what will likely be the last novel in the Kovacs universe, that that second novel, easily the weakest of the trilogy, was largely a set up to the trilogy's conclusion. Though the bloodshed I noted in Broken Angels is still present, it is linked up to a purpose this time. Simply put, the most powerful force driving humanity is the want of dominion, in some form or another. And when that want of dominion turns the powerful into ruthless tyrants, sometimes the only way to free oneself from being subject to that tyranny is violence, soul-scarring violence which can never be taken back.

If Woken Furies is the last of the Kovacs novels, it appropriately ends set on the world upon which the series began, Harlan's World, the birthplace of our antihero and now, possibly, the birthplace of a newer and fairer human order. Having left behind the unpleasantness on Sanction IV, Kovacs is roaming the streets of his hometown, viciously executing a vendetta against an extremist religious cult for its senseless killing of two people close to him, when events conspire to have him hired onto a mercenary unit which has been hired to decontaminate a continent full of sentient, military weapons, ugly legacies of past wars. During his time with the mercenaries, his recruiter collapses, only to wake up with a different personality, one which bears a striking resemblance to the long dead Quellcrist Falconer, the influential leader of a failed revolution which sought to overthrow Harlan's World's corrupt government. Is she Falconer come back from the dead? And if so, how? Will she lead another revolution? Will it succeed this time, with Kovacs to back its play?

On points, Altered Carbon is the best of this trilogy by a considerable margin; however, Woken Furies is excellent in its own right. Where Carbon was essentially a detective's story shot through with vicious politics, Furies is a first-hand account of a revolution, its guts, its brutality, and its accommodations with not only ones enemies but the truth as well. This revolutionary spirit marks out Furies as a rare kind of novel, especially in science fiction, and that rarity grants it a power all its own. For the first time in this series, Kovacs has the scene stolen by another character, Quellcrist Falconer who, after being sprinkled throughout the first two books through quotations attributed to her, appears here in the flesh. And it's a credit to Mr. Morgan's ability to animate his characters that meeting Falconer feels an awful lot like how it might feel to meet Jesus Christ. She has the rock star's aura which is all the more potent given that Mr. Morgan doesn't enlist her aid to uplift the story. On the contrary, she's probably a darker character than Kovacs himself. It's the sense of amazement and hope that she sparks in others, and maybe even in us, that elevates her to a higher, purer place than any other participant in the story. Infusing a character with this degree of gravitas is, to say the least, a special feat and a worthy close to an incomparable trilogy of books by an author with serious juice. 4/5 Stars)

Broken Angels: Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy 02 by Richard K. Morgan

From The Week of April 04, 2010

We all have our tipping points for brutality, points in literature past which the drama and the tension of a piece are drowned out by orgies of gunfire. Though Altered Carbon came close to pushing me off that cliff, particularly Kovacs's flashbacks to his gruesome missions, the violence always seemed to be rooted in a character's painful endurance of a gritty world. But without the detective's mystery to connect us to the veneer of Kovacs's integrity, to connect us to a shred of his morality, Broken Angels leaves us unanchored in a world of barbarity and cruelty that, particularly near the end of the novel, proves difficult to stomach.

It is not at all surprising to find the Takeshi Kovacs of this second novel firmly imbedded in a mercenary company contracted to help mercilessly suppress a rebellion on a colony world. He's always been a hired hand, the only difference being the varying degrees of legitimacy granted to his activities by the various organizations who've employed him. But after an especially bloody engagement, a wrench is thrown into Kovacs's exercise in personal nihilism when he's approached by one of his fellow mercenaries to take on a private mission, to retrieve an artifact from an archaeological site smack dab in the middle of the war zone. Kovacs's job will be to provide hired muscled for the mission, in the event it is necessary, and so he is directed to assemble a team of toughs willing to endure radiation and worse for what could be, for some anyway, the score of the century. It doesn't take long for the mission to go awry when other interests stick their noses in and ruin the plan, but the one thing we know about Mr. Kovacs is that he'll never run from danger and that's as true now as it's ever been. In trying to find some way to a conclusion for his mission, Kovacs journeys from radiation-riddled islands to majestic ships floating in the dead of space. The only guarantee? That With Kovacs near, a trail of death and destruction is not far off.

Broken Angels presents us a host of new characters which provide ample support for Kovacs who, again, shines. Mr. Morgan is never negligent in his duty to flesh out even the most minor of characters. But while the scenery is as vivid as ever, and while the personalities of the participants at times amuse and horrify, there's just too much pointless bloodshed splattered over the plot to fully enjoy it. Mr. Morgan is best when his cruelty is surgical, not atavistic which is why the barbarism here just doesn't quite click. Also, the archaeology here, while interesting, feels a bit forced, a bit too operatic for my tastes. But perhaps you'll feel differently. (3/5 Stars)

Altered Carbon: Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy 01 by Richard K. Morgan

From The Week of April 04, 2010

In his latest work, Mr. Morgan blew the doors off conventional, stayed fantasy fiction. And so it should be no surprise that his first novel possesses the same vein of wonderful discord which runs through all his work. Mr. Morgan has focused his prodigious talent upon a genre of fiction I'd never heard of before the Takeshi Kovacs books, a kind of 1930s detective story transported into a 26th century humanity dominated by corruption and chaos. Noir science fiction? That's the best label I can put to this thoroughly entertaining of mashed-up genres which will hopefully become as popular as the trendy but annoying Steampunk.

Takeshi Kovacs (pronounced Ko-vatch) has spent most of his life as an UN Envoy, a job which, in the future, has a lot less to do with diplomatic peacekeeping than it does with covert assassination. He and his comrades are dropped onto threatening worlds, pacifying them through whatever means necessary. Their only real injunction from their commanders? To not get caught. This is how humanity is governed in the 26th century, by a United Nations which has conquered Earth and spread out to the stars, imposing a kind of pseudo order upon human civilization. When Kovacs finds himself harmed by a mission that goes terribly wrong, he defects to become a freelance mercenary cloaked in his own disillusionment. And this is the Kovacs we meet in the first few, bloody pages of Altered Carbon.

Though Kovacs' civilization has not yet broken the barrier of faster-than-light travel, it has discovered a clever way around it, a kind of quantum broadcast which can transmit information between two distant points in space at unthinkable speeds. Needlecasts, as they are called, are what allow humanity to knit together in a cohesive society for it allows one to transfer their consciousness from one place to another, leaving one body at the point of transmission and entering another at the point of reception. Bodies are vat-grown for precisely this purpose, to allow human minds to move about the known worlds without enduring the pesky problem of years in storage as ships crawl between the stars. This notion of needlecasting, while not original to Mr. Morgan, is handled here with deftness, cleverness and thoughtfulness. Mr. Morgan doesn't shy away from the ethical implications of minds being flung about and into various bodies. We discover justhow such a technology can be used to be cruel and to commit crime. Mr. Morgan even throws in a forgotten religious cult, the Catholics, who protest Needlecasting as against the laws of God, but there's no room for religion in a universe dominated by obsessive self-interest.

After being collared by the authorities, Kovacs expects to serve a long sentence for his transgressions. But when he's surprisingly liberated and downloaded into a body on Earth, he soon realizes that he's the pawn in a rich man's game, one rich man in particular who wishes Kovacs to solve his own murder. But it's no mistake that Kovacs was picked to solve a case he wasn't trained to execute. He'll have to navigate waters he barely understands, relying on only the questionable aid of a San Francisco police officer assigned to liaise with him. There's no part of this story that lags or trips. And its occupation of such an unusual position inside science fiction grants it an exciting novelty. This is outstanding work, but it is most definitely not for the faint of heart. (5/5 Stars)