Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentlemen Bastards 02 by Scott Lynch

From The Week of July 25, 2010

It may be that devoted fans will purchase enough of Mr. Lynch's books to allow him to publish his seven planned novels in The Gentlemen Bastards, but the five to follow Red Seas Under Red Skies will have to be far better than this effort if he hopes to capitalize on the excellence of The Lies Of Locke Lamora. Though the same sense of barely controlled chaos is carried over from the series' progenitor, the punishment his protagonists endure seems out of proportion to what any human can take. This is a flaw burdens the novel and keeps it from being enjoyable.

The transition into Red Seas is relatively seamless as we re-acquaint ourselves with Locke Lamora and his chaotic world. The familiar and corrupt confines of Camorr, however, are left behind in this tale which is as much an adventure as Lies was a mystery. Here, Locke experiences, first hand, powers that are completely beyond his capacity to control, powers that threaten to destroy him and his friends with no more thought or remorse than one would spare a fly. Though powerlessness is the book's dominant fixation, a comparison of Camorr, Locke's home town, with some of the other city states in the region is a theme that runs through the novel. While Camorr's ugliness and authoritarianism appalled us in the first book, here the reader is given a bitter sampling of the region's urban alternatives. And to say that Camorr comes off well by comparison is an epic understatement. These are havens of racism, classism and despair in which one does not play games. But of course, games are what Locke Lamora does best and, when presented with the ultimate heist, he cannot help himself. He must steal a fortune from a lavish gaming house, world-renowned for having never been burgled. He must do this no matter the price, no matter that his potential victims are amoral creatures lacking any notion of self-restraint. He is, after all, a gentleman bastard.

Red Seas Under Red Skies is essentially two books, the raid on the gaming house and what comes after. And though the section with the gaming house is laugh-out-loud funny, wonderfully sleazy, and delightfully clever, it is relocated to the back seat of this thriller by its concluding section, a series of machinations at sea which push Locke and his comrades far beyond their limits. I am often quick to criticize sword-and-sorcery fantasy fiction, but that genre requires a suspension of disbelief that keeps the reader from tripping over annoyances like logic and the limits of human endurance. But when one sets out to write fairly realistic fantasy fiction, as in The Gentlemen Bastard series, one must understand that realism is expected. I need my antiheroes to have breaking points. Everyone has them, limits beyond which they simply cannot endure. But not so Locke. Yes, Mr. Lynch dusts our protagonist with a tinch of madness, but I needed more of a breakdown from a man who has experienced more trauma in a year than others would in several lifetimes. Locke needs a vacation and so do I.

This is quality fantasy if you can ignore the glutton-for-punishment strain. I could not. (3/5 Stars)

The Lies Of Locke Lamora: The Gentlemen Bastards 01 by Scott Lynch

From The Week of July 25, 2010

There has been a wonderful rise in smart, alternative, fantasy fiction in the last ten years, a surge which has re-invigorated the genre. Readers of this blog will have picked up on my love-hate relationship with Tolkienism -- love the master, sickened by the copycat knockoffs --, and so it should surprise no one that I am declaring my fondness and admiration for Mr. Lynch's work which is as funny as it is inventive. Frankly, I'm stunned he isn't British, for, until now, this kind of tight, dark comedy has only been evident in works by Joe Abercrombie and Richard K. Morgan. But no, Mr. Lynch proves that Americans too can bring the funny, in a big way.

The Gentlemen Bastards, a series of seven planned novels, takes place in a fantasy realm modelled after the Italian city states of the European renaissance. Humming with vitality, buzzing with corruption, and populated by scientific and political opportunists, Camorr is one of the more prosperous states, sporting numerous glittering palaces. The wealth to build these nods to self-indulgence largely comes through both conquest and trade, the latter of which occurs primarily through Camorr's port. Though the city is economically vibrant, it is politically authoritarian, with short-shrift given to those who disobey and disappoint its nobility. What thrives when trade and injustice meet up and have a few drinks? Crime. Lots and lots of crime...

Our protagonist, Locke Lamora, is, in every sense, the product of that crime. Plucked from his hopeless life as a street urchin by a master thief who blasphemously masquerades as a priest, Locke is inducted into a tiny brotherhood of elite criminals who have literally made fine art out of their thieving. To a large extent, they steal for the challenge. At first, it's mere coins to feed themselves, but as their skills advance, he jobs grow exponentially more intricate and dangerous. And yet, throughout, a joyous sense of the caper infuses their schemes, making them as much pranksters as serious embezzlers. These schemes provide the book much of its humor, but it also leads to agony and despair when the enemies of the Gentlemen Bastards do not find their antics nearly so amusing.

The Lies Of Locke Lamora explores every rung of Camorr's society, from the poorest of the poor to the men who have the power to kill with a look. In doing so, Mr. Lynch exposes a rare talent for world-building which never slips into self-indulgence. What's more, though the story is often times humorous, there's an underlying sadness that lends it an appropriate gravitas. It's a sadness born of rank inequality and the cruelties it creates. This is not unlike The Psalms Of Isaak series by Ken Scholes, but more amusing and with a keener eye for social critique. (4/5 Stars)

Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson

From The Week of July 25, 2010

It is surely no surprise that a history of Atlantic City, that early 20th century center of glitz and crime, American style, is concerned as much with its flamboyant bosses as it is with the city itself. For it seems, at times, that this happy den of self-indulgence is the personification of the men who, at various points, commanded its loyalty and steered it into prosperous waters. Mr. Johnson's biography of a once glamorous American town dovetails nicely with the HBO television show of the same name, serving as an excellent primer for the rhythms of a city that, long ago, burned so brightly.

Birthed from a 19th century doctor's desire to find the perfect spot for patients and citizens to recuperate from the difficulties of the industrializing world, Atlantic City needed only a matter of years to fall into the hungry hands of special interests with deep pockets. It was railways at first, railways that rolled in the crowds from New York and Philadelphia. But then, as time went along, other interests joined the fray, interests that brought accommodations, then prostitutes, then alcohol and gambling. Soon enough, the town was hopping, buildings thrown up as fast as crews could build them as Atlantic City rolled in money and electricity. The 1920s were the high-point of Atlantic City. Rather than cramp their business, Prohibition merely codified a collection of disparate interests into a formidable, criminal organization capable of servicing the interests of its visitors. The most effective way of maintaining order was, of course, to control local politics, an industry the syndicate conquered and then dominated, in some form or another, for the next 20 years. Eventually, the federal authorities would organize themselves enough to battle these powerful bosses, breaking down the codes of loyalty and secrecy that had served them so well, but not before a coherent network of organized criminals was founded, a network that would run the Atlantic coast and rule over various industries for decades to come.

Boardwalk Empire spends as much time chronicling Atlantic City's decline as it does its successes. The slow decay of a once happening town is painful to watch, like a patient on life support who refuses to give up. Though it has experienced a number of resurgences, its glory days are largely gone, enshrouded by the mists of a looser time. In this, its rise and fall is a mirror of many American towns which peaked in popularity in the early half of the 20th century, only to rust away. The causes are different, of course, but this affinity gives this effort an extra poignancy.

Mr. Johnson lingers overlong on Atlantic City's most famous boss, Nucky Johnson, but then the man towers over the city's history during its most prosperous period. As such, Mr. Johnson, the author, can hardly be blamed for describing in vivid detail the ways and means of his empire. Thorough is an overused descriptor of histories, but a book that covers the politics, the scandals, the prime movers and, the vicissitudes of a place over five generations has surely earned such a label. (3/5 Stars)

Now I Can Die In Peace by Bill Simmons

From The Week of July 25, 2010

Bill Simmons, also known as the Sports Guy, is a pioneer of a new form of 21st century journalism which has flourished thanks in large part to the rise of the Internet. It is a journalism that forsakes objectivity for the passionate fandom that can only come from a lifetime of watching a team perform day in and day out. Without moderation, sycophantism would be inevitable to a writer in this practice, but Mr. Simmons outshines his peers because he writes about his teams -- the Boston-area sports franchises -- with a charming balance between veneration and criticism, on issues both important and trivial. This is an admirable quality in a fan, a label typically slapped on those with a complete incapacity for objectivity and rational thought. And so, while the Internet has brought to light a Bill Simmons for every team, the journalistic eye of the original has put him a cut above the rest.

Now I Can Die In Peace is a collation of Mr. Simmons' columns, from 1999 to 2004, which primarily concern the Boston Red Sox. Tracing the franchise's history of torture, the book has Mr. Simmons' wonderful flair for conflating sports and culture into a personalized amalgam of joy and sorrow, emotions with which all lovers of sports are familiar. Spicing this stew with his own personal experiences, we see a life in development set against the backdrop of organized sport which has an irrational but amazing hold over most of us adult males. But while all this is thoroughly entertaining, it is a book that could not have held together without the stunning u-turn of fortune the Red Sox experienced in 2004 when, down three-games-to-none to the New York Yankees, on the brink of elimination in the ALCS, they came back to win four straight games, eventualy claiming that season's World Series. It's an event which, for generations of fans of the team, was an exorcism of all the pains and torment, allowing them, yes, to die in peace.

This is a fluffy read, but what book about sport, not consumed by stats, isn't? Sport is an indulgence, a connection with the past. Its literature is no different. Nonetheless, it has an inexplicable power to unite us in common cause and in shared memory, of a time when we were younger and dumber and far more care free. This work won't win any literary prizes, but it is raw, heartfelt and witty, all of which make it perfect for the now. (3/5 Stars)

The Girls Of Murder City by Douglas Perry

From The Week of July 25, 2010

While Mr. Perry's encapsulation of a particularly violent and glamorous period in Chicago's history leans too heavily on titillation, it hasn't missed its mark in its attempt to entertain us. In many ways, Mr. Perry has captured an early snapshot of the stratospheric rise of celebrity culture as viewed through the lens of a select few women in 1920s Chicago, all of whom found themselves the exemplars of a cultural shift that had been slowly gaining steam ever since the rise of industrialization. Their crimes and the freedoms that resulted from them, are the subject of this glitzy chronicle.

1920s Chicago is very different from any major, 21st century metropolis. Prohibition has driven drinking underground and, in doing so, has only re-enforced the cultural norm of keeping ones problems and ones excesses to oneself. Women bear the particular brunt of this. Having recently earned the vote, they are far from treated as equals to men. Jobs outside a few select vocations are scarce, forcing many into idleness. And with no genuine constraints on male behavior, marital problems persist in a city still adjusting to the anonymizing influence of urban existence. As such, a series of extraordinary crimes, committed by women, almost seem inevitable, as accidents, injustices, and blind rages fuel attacks on boyfriends, husbands and friends. This sharp uptick in murders committed by women is first noticed and then commented upon by one of the city's only female newspaper reporters, a prudish newcomer to the city who deeply disapproves of these violent outbursts. However, these same outbursts make her career as, on a daily basis, she files stories chronicling one of the decade's most famous trials, that of Belva Gaertner, a glamorous society wife who stands accused of murdering the married man she was having an affair with. These and other crimes covered here by Mr. Perry inspire the newspaper reporter, Maurine Watkins, to write the wildly successful musical Chicago.

The Girls Of Murder City glitters, rife as it is with vice, injustice and prejudice. And it's certainly edifying to learn of the origins of Chicago and the pioneering woman who wrote it in 1927. But something here feels a bit too exploitative. All the interested parties are long dead, so there's no harm done here, but I just can't shake the dirty feeling I experienced reading this book. Mr. Perry's tone almost seems to take pleasure in what are calamitous and horrifying events. Good, but it requires the right mood to be properly enjoyed. (3/5 Stars)

The Starfish And The Spider by Ori Brafman And Rod Beckstrom

From The Week of July 18, 2010

Hope for the future of our world resides in open systems, decentralized social and technological networks which reject the traditional top-down power model that has been with humanity for millennia. Not only is the concept of a strongman, commanding a hierarchy (closed network) perilously susceptible to corruption and narrowmindedness, it assumes that the leader's single brain will out-perform the collective intelligences of everyone beneath him. This may have been true hundreds of years ago, when the lives of the vast majority of people were lived within the scope of a single, lightly populated village; but in a technological society based on connectivity, connectivity on a scale we've never seen before in the history of our species, the closed, hierarchical network collapses beneath the weight of millions of educated minds collectively contributing to the advancement of a particular aim. The Starfish And The Spider is a clever discussion of both this idea and examples of how it has been successfully applied to every day life.

The title of this work is a wonderful illustration of the book's argument. A spider is the strongman. Everything, power, food, flows to him through his web. Kill the spider and the web dies. There's no one left to tend it, organize it. A starfish, by contrast, is a completely decentralized network. Cut off any part of the starfish and it grows back. There is no part of the starfish more vital to its functioning than any other part. The authors offer another, human analogy. The Aztec empire which, at its height, had a population in the millions and territory covering most of South and Central America, was felled by 500 Spanish conquistadors, captained by a man who deployed classic divide-and-conquer tactics against the Aztec's unpopular leader. Contrast this with the Spanish experience with the Apache tribes who held that the Apache culture was equally carried and advanced by each of its tribespeople, that if one warrior died, the next would rise up to carry on the ethos. Such a system confounded the Spaniards who, coming from a hierarchical society, couldn't conceive of a world built and administrated without leaders. Though many other causes contributed to the failure of the Aztecs and the endurance of the Apache, and though starfish are not immune to killing blows, the point is that our traditional notion of investing our faith and, our trust and our self-worth in a single savior only makes us emotionally and societally vulnerable to that leader's ouster. Distributing an equal share of faith and trust across a community of people ensures survival and persistence in the group so long as a single member of the group draws breath. It is a powerful and convincing reversal of fortune, the conversion of a weakness into a strength, that is demonstrated most often in the Internet-based phenomena of the 21st century like Napster and Wikipedia and Facebook, entities which would not exist, which would not have distributable content, without their millions of contributing users.

While the authors are successful in depicting the optimistic view of open networks, they fail to speak to some of the difficult challenges of leaderless movements. Yes, they are difficult to kill, but what if they've served their purpose? Will they naturally wind down, or will they have accumulated enough power that they will persists despite the wishes of their members? The Tea Party is an excellent example of a leaderless movement that, once it has gained momentum, will be difficult to stop. With no leader to subvert, the Tea Party is a powerful force for political and economic change in the United States. This is good. But what will be enough for the Tea Party? When will they be satisfied? When will they stop? Will everyone involved, everyone who has been given a purpose by the Tea Party, collectively decide to walk away, content in the knowledge they've done good, or will its embryonic leadership convince its members that more must be done? Simply put, is an open network susceptible to being converted into a hierarchical network by the twin temptations of power and money?

This is a worthwhile discussion of an important and powerful idea. It is argued well and it's certainly entertaining, but a failure to discuss some of the weaknesses of open networks left me wondering if this is just wishful thinking. The egalitarian principles of leaderless movements are potent forces for change in our world, change for the good, but egalitarianism doesn't have the best success rate. We can only hope that this time will be different. (3/5 Stars)

Every Man In This Village Is A Liar by Megan Stack

From The Week of July 18, 2010

Megan Stack, a war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, may nod now and again in the direction of journalistic impartiality, but as she exposes in this, her memoir of her war-zone work since 2001, there are times when lies and corruption are too much for her to take. The alternating currents of burning passion and depressive cynicism which run through her work imbue it with raw and aching intensity, but at what cost to Ms. Stack's soul I wonder. For it's clear, in Every Man In This Village Is A Liar, that there are some sights and some lies that cut far too deep for anyone to handle.

Vacationing in Paris, Megan Stack woke up on the morning of September 11th, 2001, to the world-changing event which launched the War on Terror. A short time later, 25 years old, and with no formal training in such conflict, she was in Afghanistan, covering a war that wasn't really a war. Even so, it would last years, sending Ms. Stack from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It would send her into some of the most dangerous places on Earth, subject her to the most authoritarian regimes, obligate her to witness the most terrible things, all the while knowing that there were no, and would be no, clean skins in a war on nothing more substantial than an idea. And in this, Ms. Stack grasps the central lie of the War on Terror, that it will never end. Victory cannot be declared over terror! This is nothing less than a path towards the State of permanent war, divorcing it from righteousness and logic. With each depraved discovery, Ms. Stack seems to slip deeper and deeper into anger and despair, a witness to the unfolding of a thing too big for any normal person to halt. And it tears her up even as she tries to put a face on a part of the world that few of us understand.

There's a tortured grace about Ms. Stack's work that calls to mind Roberto Saviano. There's a sense, throughout, that she will burn out, that she might have already, that she'd stop if she could, but that this story needs to be told. For every lash the reader receives in reading the account, Ms. Stack endured ten to tell it. The lyricism here firmly plants Ms. Stack in the camp of narrative journalism which will always encourage questions concerning how much a piece has been massaged to fit the story. But whatever it loses in absolute truth it more than makes up for in crackling emotion, the likes of which will not soon be forgotten. (4/5 Stars)

Genome by Matt Ridley

From The Week of July 18, 2010

Mr. Ridley's breakdown of the 23 chromosomal pairs that comprise the human genome succeeds in its effort to educate and entertain. The clever way in which Mr. Ridley has connected each chromosome to a human trait allows him to not only explore the purpose of a given chromosome, but to investigate its sociological equivalents. Unfortunately, Genome suffers from the flaw of most books of popular science, particularly ones that cover rapidly evolving fields, of which genetics is one. Virtually at the moment of its printing, the book is inevitably out of date, with the latest research challenging what is necessarily an incomplete picture of a poorly understood system.

Mr. Ridley packs so much information into this narrative of genetics that it sometimes overwhelms a mind only conversationally aware of many of its key points. It will likely have to be read twice to be completely understood, but this will be a virtue for the innately curious. After all, this is a tome which discusses everything from the origins of sex and free will, to intelligence and instinct, a boldly broad scope for a single effort. Consequently, there is very little fluff here as the reader learns of the basics of DNA, its codes, its systems, its capacity to proliferate and repair, all necessities for the evolution of life on Earth.

There are glaring omissions. A failure to discuss the role that master genes play in the development of the species leaves out a vital cog in a machine that Mr. Ridley otherwise describes in vivid detail. But while the picture is incomplete, Mr. Ridley is admirably honest about just how little we know of the human genome. Yes, its mechanisms can be understood, but all its outcomes, the impact of its myriad combinations and functions? For that, we will have to wait years. But I would much rather an author admit to a lack of understanding than attempt to pretend as though he has the only true story. None of us have the complete truth of anything. It's an honesty that serves this enlightening chronicle well. (3/5 Stars)

Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan

From The Week of July 18, 2010

Even a cursory search of this blog will turn up numerous occasions in which I have showered Mr. Morgan with my admiration and affection. But while I respect the originality of the work, I struggled to digest its nihilism which was, at times, violent and cartoonish.

Market Forces imagines a near-future Britain which has completely succumbed to the cutthroat competition of corporate warfare. Ones position at work, as well as the fortunes of ones company, are defined by the newest spectator sport, combat driving, in which corporate executives, ensconced in glitzy cars tooled up for war, do their best to kill one another on the open road. Chris, our antihero, begins the novel as a middling executive quite content with his lot in life at a British company who trades in foreign wars. But as a series of events conspire to catapult him to the breathless heights of power, his dissatisfaction with the life grows until the pressure of the depravity and the ugliness threaten to crack him. Doing what they can to aid in this sundering of Chris' identity are a handful of foreign idealists who try to twig Chris' largely dormant conscience. But drowning out these positive influences are the seductive voices tempting him ever deeper into the world of corporate battle-wagons and international arms-dealing which makes demigods of ordinary mortals. Will Chris resist the urge to succumb, or will he fall and allow himself to revel in the corporate power destroying England? No matter which way it goes, it'll be a Hellride of epic proportions.

Mr. Morgan makes no bones of his criticism of British culture in what must be his most controversial effort. It cannot be a coincidence that the native English are invariably corrupt while the foreign-born actors look upon these island savages with disgust and contempt. But while Mr. Morgan is successful in holding up a mirror to the ever-more-hostile corporate culture, the seriousness of the message is muffled by the cartoonish nature of the battle races. Battle wagons, really? Corporate Samurai taken literally? It's all just a little too obvious. It's entertaining, no question; there's more than enough hedonism and nihilistic abandonment, and sharp, social critique here to satisfy any fan of Mr. Morgan's, much less any fan of dystopian fiction. But I expected more nuance from the master and I did not get it here. If Thirteen is is evisceration by scalpel, Market Forces is a baseball bat repeatedly upside the head. True, the baseball bat has its unsubtle virtues, but those are outweighed here by its sins. (2/5 Stars)

PS: And you know it kills me to rate it so low, especially for its inventiveness. But it is what it is.

George, Nicholas And Wilhelm by Miranda Carter

From The Week of July 11, 2010

Though the structure of Ms. Carter's biography has nothing of inventiveness or uniqueness about it, her deft hand with historical subjects, and her choice of topics, mark out this effort as a worthy read. It could stand to be shorter by a hundred pages, but the portrait it paints of three men jostling one another at a vital pivot point in history makes up for the longwindedness typical of historians and their histories.

George, Nicholas And Wilhelm is a well-researched history of the men who ruled Germany, Russia and England at the dawn of the First World War. Related through queen Victoria of England, King George, Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas were royal cousins, inheritors of problematic and idealistic nations naive to the horrors of the 20th century, horrors which would do their level best to drown their three nations in blood and death. Unable to imagine such a calamitous slaughter, the cousins indulge in rivalry and hurt feelings, sparking what ought to have been a perfectly controllable diplomatic situation into a war for the world, a war that re-shaped Europe, a war which succeeded in killing millions without achieving a lasting peace. That folly successfully drapes over this chronicle like a dark cloud, ready to open up and rain doom down upon the proud men who allowed their pricked pride to guide them towards ruin.

As much as Ms. Carter infuses her tale with a deep sense of foreboding, she does not forsake the history. Clear and grim sketches of each of the three superpowers is etched out in thorough detail: the hyper-militarism of Germany, the mercantile aristocracy of England and the bubbling caldron of discontent that is always Russia. Each land is ill-served by the cousin entrusted with its care and protection. But equally so, each cousin is so clearly a puppet for the greater forces at play within their realms, relics of a passing, autocratic age which have been left to linger too long. Ms. Carter does a wonderful job describing the family from which the cousins come. She paints their eccentricities, their fears, their passions, their lonelinesses. It's an effort that not only succeeds in educating the reader on a poorly remembered time, it exemplifies the folly of monarchical rule. And the global disasters that can result from overweening pride.

this is a lovely but somewhat plodding work. King George is easily the weakest of the portrayed royals, but Wilhelm and Nicholas, in their pride, and their mistakes, animate from their pages as, deeply, the institutionalized products of a thankfully dead time. (3/5 Stars))

The Secret Language Of Dolphins by Patricia St. John

From The Week of July 11, 2010

Though it's clear that Ms. St. John is something of a flake, sprinkling this memoir with vague hints of a troubled past, her love of animals and her passion for helping autistic children elevate her above the self-centeredness of her narrative and grant her somewhat spectacular claims, in The Secret Language Of Dolphins, a legitimacy they would have otherwise lacked.

After searching high and low for her true self and finding it nowhere, Ms. St. John seems at something of an impasse in her life. Then, a transformative encounter with a dolphin changes the trajectory of her life and sets her on course to make a difference in the lives of the disabled. Though her efforts are often frustrated by the vagaries of interspecies communication, Ms. St. John believes that, through trial and error, she has made an emotional and an intellectual connection with several dolphins, all of whom, according to her account, seem capable of both understanding and interacting with her on a coherent, logical level. In fact, Ms. St. John documents several instances in which the dolphins seem far more attuned to the emotions of the humans around her than even Ms. St. John seems to be. This startling revelation is never once shied away from. On the contrary, Ms. St. John embraces the intuitiveness of dolphins, finding that their particular acuity translates quite well to humans with autism, many of whom come away from their experiences with the dolphins moved in ways their parents find startlingly atypical. Ms. St. John claims, in this way, that, accorded the proper respect, dolphins can be healers of human damage. After all, she is a non-autistic example of their powers.

Though an uncomfortable cloud of mysticism hovers over this story of personal redemption through dolphins, I could not help but feel heartened by the peace Ms. St. John takes from these remarkable creatures. Her loving descriptions of them and their habits do not fail to delight. And though there's room for skepticism concerning her unscientific claims of their capacity to heal, the dolphins' interaction with the autistic adolescence of Ms. St. John's acquaintance stir up hope that, someday, there will be a remedy for a condition which must be difficult to live with. Yes, Ms. St. John is too often the star of her own show, but that does not doom an inspiring effort from a woman who transcends the selfish desire to heal herself to unselfishly embrace those around her who need help. And, in doing so, she seems to have done more good than harm which is more than can be said of many other humans on this planet. I have a feeling that this is just one of many methods to alternative healing which will be championed in the years to come. (3/5 Stars)

The Human, The Orchid And The Octopus by Jacques Cousteau

From The Week of July 11, 2010

On a list of human beings who lived their lives to the fullest, Jacques Cousteau's name must be prominent. For the 87 years he lived and breathed on Earth, he covered off seemingly every imaginable pursuit connected to the ocean. Water, it's clear, was his enduring love. And in this book, which is half memoir and half philosophical statement, he not only explains why, he describes, in vivid detail, how we are perverting the thing he loves most.

I expected more pompousness from a man as accomplished as Mr. Cousteau. I expected a sense of entitlement to ripple through his account, a sense that he had the answers to all the questions. But while a certain streak of false modesty permeates these pages, there's a core of decency to the man that will empower his legacy for decades to come. And what is that legacy? Advocacy for the sea, the final dumping ground for human waste, a convenient place to hide our mistakes because we don't have to live in the soup that we've turned toxic with our experiments gone wrong. Many of Mr. Cousteau's roles, filmaker, explorer, activist, innovator, were positions he adopted to speak up for the sea from which all life on this planet stemmed and without which we could not survive. But while this effort is dominated by these passionate opinions, there's room enough for Mr. Cousteau's personal life, the events which gave him form, the events that spurred him on to greatness, the events which made him stronger. These inspire as much as they amaze.

This is a solidly constructed and moving portrait of a man and his loving relationship with the world around him. It is a book about a man who never lost his curiosity, his desire to see and embrace the new. His innovator's spirit is as delightful as the unreserved joy he takes in the simple pleasures of friends and beauty. It's only major flaw is the book's conclusion, taken up in the main by Mr. Cousteau's personal imagining of what the future of humanity will look like. He explores evolution, clean technology, and spiritualism, uniting them into a naturalist, humanist philosophy which, while admirable, is completely unrealistic. Mr. Cousteau was a dreamer and so I should've predicted this indulgent episode in wishful thinking. I didn't though and, consequently, I was left taken aback by Mr. Cousteau's inability to acknowledge those core drivers which keep humanity from achieving any form of utopia. The most powerful of these is self-interest which gives rise to other, lesser forces like greed and covetousness and selfishness. Mr. Cousteau does not address these needs, an omission which saps the legitimacy from his idealistic vision of the future. (3/5 Stars)

Empress Of Mijak: Godspeaker 01 by Karen Miller

From The Week of July 11, 2010

Often times, in literature, it does not pay to be inventive or courageous. This is especially true in the more pulpy genres of fiction, like Fantasy, where customers have pre-existing expectations for what they are about to consume. Ms. Miller, in this first of a trilogy, disposes with such safe notions, bravely re-imagining a genre cluttered by banal knockoffs. Yes, Empress of Mijak is both plodding and gratuitous, but the avant-garde force of its central idea powers it over the finish line.

For a 600 page book, Ms. Miller wastes no time establishing her protagonist, hekat, and the ugly world in which she's forced to live. Deep in the desert realm of Mijak, 12-year-old Hekat is so neglected by her family, so unwanted by her society, that she spends half her time chained up in what passes for a childhood home, denied a name and a purpose. She is more kin to rats than human beings, but then women in her world have only one, predictable purpose, to produce children, preferably boys. When hekat is sold to a slaver who sees an uncommon beauty beneath her grime, the door to a better future opens just a crack, just enough for Hekat's ambitions to catch fire and to drive her to learn, then to scheme, and then finally to conquer all of those who ever wronged her. Empress Of Mijak is a chronicle of a rise-to-power of a wronged woman in whom weakness has long since been burned out by the relentless sun, a woman who will stop at nothing to be crowned empress of Mijak.

In casting her villain as the protagonist of the piece, Ms. Miller has given herself the opportunity to explore the evolution of evil. Hekat begins the novel as a pitiable creature, dirty, naked, starving, abused. She's completely taken for granted by all those around her and, as a consequence, claims our sympathies. But as Hekat gains in power and status, it becomes terrifyingly clear that Hekat, rather than fear the darkness inside her, is perfectly willing to embrace evil, to cradle it, to grow it, and to use it as a weapon against her enemies. She is not a reformer of her corrupt realm; she is the latest installment in a long, corrupted line of despots who have ruled over Mijak with iron-fisted cruelty. In this way, Hekat manipulates the reader in the same way she manipulates everyone she comes across, drawing them in by preying on their empathy and then ruthlessly using them to suit her own purposes. This is beautifully executed by Ms. Miller.

Unfortunately, the story itself does not do justice to the villain-as-hero paradigm shift. Much like merciless Mijak itself, the plot and the characters are painfully two-dimensional. The former is, for the most part, a series of events designed to allow Hekat to conquer and advance her aims. The latter are a collection of victims, deserved or otherwise, offered up for Hekat to consume. This may have been Ms. Miller's intention, but more variety is required for 600 pages.

I'm interested to see if Empress of Mijak spawns a new kind of villain fiction. It's wonderful to have ones expectations so thoroughly overturned. It's just a shame the book isn't half as long. (3/5 Stars)

Tears In The Desert by Halima Bashir

From The Week of July 04, 2010

The murderous, ethnic conflict in Darfur has been talked about in the news and championed by celebrities, but those of us who live far away from such events struggle sometimes to emotionally connect with disasters we don't understand, events couched in a culture with which we have little or no experience. This is what gives war memoirs so much power. Finding similarities between ourselves and people we will never meet creates a bond that supersedes culture, that goes beyond race, and allows us to imagine ourselves entrenched in a fight against a people trying to end our way of life. Tears In The Desert not only forges this connection, it launches us on a journey we won't soon forget.

Halima Bashir did not have much while she grew up in Darfur, but then no one else did either. A tribal life does not involve itself much in economics, preferring the simpler exchange of bartered goods and inter-family bonds which knit the tribe together in shared action and effort. And so Ms. Bashir does not seemed to have missed Western conveniences as she describes, in the first half of her work, her mostly care-free childhood in a place where possessing even a radio was a luxury. Plenty of characters come to life around Ms. Bashir: her dogged father, her ignorant grandmother, her slightly overwhelmed but diligent mother. Through each of them, we see how a culture perpetuates its customs and its eccentricities, no matter the cost in pain and blood. Ritual has, for thousands of years, bound various people into a collective unit and that's vividly demonstrated here.

The memoirs second half finds Ms. Bashir a woman grown. Having strived to attend university, she is one of the lucky few Darfuri who earn a placement at the University of Khartoum where she experiences, first-hand, the Sudanese government's strides towards violent despotism. Ms. Bashir studies to be a doctor while her country slowly, achingly, falls apart.

The rest is terrifyingly inevitable. War washes over her world, imperiling her family while Ms. Bashir herself is stationed in a village, serving the medical needs of the people there. Death and the worse aspects of man's nature stalk her and her country, shattering her and everyone around her with the powerful fist of ignorance. As such, it is easy to imagine Ms. Bashir as Darfur, for what is done to it is done to her, scattering the pieces of herself so thoroughly, it requires years for her to put them back together. A life overturned and permanently re-directed onto a path no one should have to walk.

Ms. Bashir's story is an inspiring example of both human endurance and the human capacity to heal, physically and mentally. But the greatest tragedy, the one which Ms. Bashir illustrates so well, is that those limits had to be tested at all. Why? For ethnic unity? For profit? For power? What are these things when set against the destruction of someone's way of life, someone's freedom? A hard, dark, and difficult read, but well worth it. We must understand what we are capable of, light and dark. Only then can we maintain the former and use it to burn out the latter. (4/5 Stars)

My Life As A Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani

From The Week of July 11, 2010

After watching from afar while Iran's 2009 Green Revolution was brutally suppressed, I found myself in need of a better understanding of that most influential and mysterious of Middle Eastern nations. How could a country of 70 million people, many of them enlightened, educated, rational, fall so deeply under the sway of a group of ruthless and despotic mullahs? Though the scope of My Life As a Traitor is too narrow to provide adequate answers to such sweeping questions of the how and the why of Iran's recent history, it does offer up a chilling portrayal of life inside authoritarianism, a life lived far too courageously for despots unwilling to tolerate dissent.

Born into a family of modest means, Ms. Ghahramani had a surprisingly normative childhood. Part of a Middle Eastern baby boom, she is raised up in the shadow of the Iran-Iraq war which consumed those two nations for most of the 1980s, bringing them both to the brink of social and economic ruin. And though the parents do what they can to keep her and her generation from having to experience the inevitable scars of war, it becomes clear to Ms. Ghahramani, early on, that life in the postwar Iran is very different from the life her parents grew up with. The story then jumps forward to the early aughts where, after growing increasingly frustrated and upset with her country's theocratic rulers, she joins her fellow university students in a series of 1960s-style student demonstrations designed to shed light on injustices and usher in appropriate reforms. For her efforts, Ms. Ghahramani and many of her friends were arrested -- really, kidnapped -- and imprisoned in Evin, one of Iran's harshest detention centers. There, her life gets exceedingly grim as she attempts to withstand an experience the likes of which most Westerners will never know.

This is a powerful recount of a life irrevocably altered by tyranny. Ms. Ghahramani's chilling description of the ruthlessness of her arrest, the depravity and humiliation of her captivity, and the cruelty of those who try so hard to keep her silent is moving and inspiring. Unprepared for her ordeal, lacking any formal training in techniques that might have helped her to stay sane, Ms. Ghahramani's capacity to endure is an exemplar of the near limitless strength of the human spirit. Equally, this book left me with a clearer picture of the Iranian authorities, a picture which does not leave much hope for positive change. We see, here, how they have become masters of the art of retaining power, deploying a mixture of military and religious force to dominate and control a country of unarmed citizens who find it difficult to organize and fight back against a regime perfectly willing to beat, shoot and torture them. An excellent but disturbing read. (4/5 Stars)

Secret Histories by Emma Larkin

From The Week of July 11, 2010

Still buzzing from Everything Is Broken's literary high, I was thrilled to have located Emma Larkin's other published novel in my local library. And that this, her first effort, even comes close in quality to her devastating account of Burma through the lens of cyclone Nargis is a credit to her sharp mind, keen eye, and diligent pursuit of the obscure.

Secret Histories adopts the same narrative construct as Everything Is Broken, but while Burma and its culture remain the informative backdrop, the lens of this story is, fascinatingly, George Orwell and the time he spent in Burma as a youthful police officer in British, imperial law-enforcement from 1922 to 1927. Ms. Larkin appears quite startled to learn that one of the 20th century's most famous critics of authoritarianism not only spent time in Burma, but did so as part of a ruthless and cynical imperialist machine. Actually, this is often the way of human nature. Injustice does not make itself manifest to us; it has to be found, to be experienced, before the fullness of its abhorrence can be understood by those of us lucky enough to be reared beyond its shadow. Ms. Larkin discovers that this was precisely the lesson Mr. Orwell learned as, after being churned out of good British schools with good, British reputations, he went to Burma and saw, first-hand, the incalculable damage imperialism was doing to that country. Ms. Larkin chronicles how what Mr. Orwell saw changed his outlook on the world which would inform his later work, work cherished by all those who appreciate freedom. Secret Histories is, then, an amalgam of Ms. Larkin's many adventures in Burma, attempting to chronicle where Mr. Orwell went, what he saw, who he talked to, and how that poor, torn nation changed him into the man remembered by history.

Secret Histories is archaeological in tone, an exploration of an old event in a modern time, the composite of an author's attempts to piece together a myriad of informational scraps and forming from them an informative portrait. Though Ms. Larkin's efforts are often thwarted, Burma itself, its monuments, its talking teahouses, its people, shines. The resilience of the people is remarkable when one considers that the junta, which has ruled that nation since 1962, is a vision of Orwellian authoritarianism; a well-oiled machine, practiced in lying, shameless in deed, and relentlessly cruel in rule. That Mr. Orwell's nightmare has animated out of the pages of 1984 and into reality, today, in our world, is eerie, astonishing and endlessly sad. This is a wonderful book which tackles events both macro and micro and is, admirably, equally successful at both. (4/5 Stars)

A Cavern Of Black Ice: Sword Of Shadows 01 by J. V. Jones

From The Week of July 04, 2010

There's a kind of darkly epic fantasy fiction that has been growing in popularity over the last 20 years. A backlash against Tolkienism and its many, many knockoffs? Perhaps. In my opinion, the standard for this fiction was set high by George R. R. Martin who, in his A Song of Ice And Fire series, redefined grim humor and twisted fate in fantasy. If Martin, then, is the standard that must be met, Ms. Jones comes up uncomfortably short.

In a grim world of ice and snow, governed by corrupt feudal states and the barbaric tribes that border them, a girl is born with the power to beat back the darkness. Her powers, which are largely beyond her own control, are keenly sought after by various strongmen in the world. But despite their covetousness, she falls in with an outcast barbarian clansman who is willing to lead her into the harshness of the tundra in order for her to complete her mission, the mission for which she may or may not have been born.

If A Cavern of Black Ice is your first exposure to the Dark Epic, it might perform well enough. Our two protagonists are interesting enough. Raif, the clansman, is a young and tragic figure who has had his family and his innocence stolen from him in a series of slowly developing cruelties that mostly animate him. Ash, the girl, and her need to believe in someone, anyone, after her orphaned childhood is equally potent and sympathetic. But beyond this, there's almost nothing about this tale that's new or terribly inventive. A quest to save the world? Check. A journey against all odds? Check. Young, tormented love? Half check. And though not everyone can, or even wishes to, write the great, unique novel, it's incumbent upon an author walking well-trodden ground to unearth something new: a plot twist, a kind of magic, an unexpected conclusion, a reconfigured quest... But none of that is here. What's more, the sheer amount of suffering Raif is forced to endure made me wonder why he didn't just end it all. The deck is so clearly stacked against him that there seems, at numerous points, nothing for him to do but lay down and let it all go. The author's hand is too obvious here, as disaster after disaster lines up to kick Raif where it counts. I needed more. But hey, if you like your fantasy with three scoops of savagery and torture, about on par with Joe Abercrombie, you need look no farther. (2/5 Stars)

Tears In The Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman

From The Week of June 27, 2010

Prior to reading a brief reference to the Bataan Death March in one of Iris Chang's books, probably The Rape of Nanking, I knew nothing of this most remarkable and ugly incident of the Second World War. Mr. And Ms. Norman have assembled a chilling account of this bloody and shameful odyssey, fixing it through the eyes of an American survivor who, prior to the war, would have had no way to prepare himself for the darkness he was about to experience. I only read the book and I wasn't prepared for what one group of humans can do to another when national pride is at stake.

In April of 1942, after a three month battle against Japanese imperial forces, 75,000 American and Philipino troops surrendered on the orders of their immediate commanding officer, Major General Ned King. A Southerner by birth and disposition, and under orders from Douglas Macarthur to fight on, King knew his men were exhausted, that a series of strategic blunders had made the situation hopeless, and that there was no escape from the Japanese. Continued hostilities would destroy his army, but if he surrendered, well, then that army would exist in some form or another, to fight another day.

The Japanese accepted the surrender of the army, stripped the soldiers of their belongings and without rest, without food, and without a shred of mercy, ordered them to march 100 kilometers to a Japanese internment camp. For men already starving, this might be a deathblow. And indeed, as the soldiers were whipped, prodded and beaten to march onward, 11,000 of the 72,000 POWs who began the march died before reaching their destination, with many thousands more succumbing during captivity. Tears In The Darkness is an account of that march and of the mistreatment that came after: the slavery, the transportation, the deprivation, and finally the freedom.

Though the march itself is harrowing enough, Mr. And Ms. Norman also cover the war crimes trial which sought to find justice for the dead. But the book's greatest success is in portrayal of the various forms of human courage. After being personally responsible for many of the strategic blunders which lead to the surrender, Douglas MacArthur was allowed to flee back to America with promises that he'd get the army in the Philippines out soon enough. But not only did that help never arrive, he ordered his men to die heroically while safely ensconced half a world away. Meanwhile, the soldiers in the trenches, trenches General MacArthur couldn't bring himself to do more than occasionally tour, endured untold hardships to make it home alive. And because their names are many and MacArthur's is but one, it is the cowardly general history remembers, not the brave souls who lived up, unbowed, from the unspeakable. I always knew history was unfair, but this unfair?

Often, in order to convince ones own armies of the rightness of the cause, a country's leadership will claim the enemy is subhuman, beneath the dignity and the glory of the rightful victors. These are lies, of course, but belief in a lie can still make one do unspeakable things. And it turns out, a human being is willing to do the most hellish things imaginable to you just so long as he doesn't think you human. Devastating... (4/5 Stars)