Corruption and the new France in the dark The Marseilles Trilogy

From The Week of December 16th, 2013

Corruption is a cancer that, when unchecked by the will to do good, spreads malignantly through the body of society, devouring virtue at every turn until civilization is simply a wasteland of broken dreams. Other crimes, other sins, lack this power to spread and infect. They are either regulated by the good around them, or quarantined into small ghettos where such behavior is, if not normative, then certainly expected. But corruption cannot be confined in this way because of its most potent weapon, the communication to the minds of the good that they are fools for playing by society's rules, that only dupes refuse to partake of the sweet fruit of all of corruption's temptations. No other form of wickedness can so swiftly convince the good to do bad, a truth made abundantly clear in Jean-Claude Izzo's engaging trilogy.

In the late 1990s, at the dawn of modern Europe, life in the French port city of Marseilles, the first city of the third world, is difficult and divisive. Not only are jobs relatively scarce, making rife the exploitation of the vulnerable, poverty and the influx of immigrants have created fertile soil for the racist National Front to bed down and nurture their cruel plots against all those who do not look like them. But underneath the drumbeat of the Front's marches, beyond the screeds of their pamphlets, is an even deeper threat from Italy, a Mafia culture that threatens to reach out and worm its corrosive tentacles into every aspect of European life.

Fighting a one-man war against these threats, which are as foul as they are pervasive, is Fabio Montale, a cop come reluctant crusader who has lived all his life in this dirty city of discontent. A hoodlum in his youth, he found his way onto the side of justice when he could no longer stomach the nihilism of criminality. And yet, while Fabio finds purpose with the police, he does not find peace. For they, in their own way, are just as corrupt as the world they seek to marginalize. Isolated in his quiet quest to keep the Mafia and the national Front from ruining Marseilles, Fabio is ill-prepared for the lengths they are willing to go to win, against him and against the world they want to own. Killing his friends, or even just people seen with him is nothing. What will Fabio have to surrender to continue on the path of righteousness? And does he have the right to endanger those closest to him to fight a war he cannot win?

Adventures through the racist and corrupt underbelly of this French city, The Marseilles Trilogy is as riveting as it is sloppy. Mr. Izzo, whose work helped create the genre of Mediterranean Noir, of which this trilogy is a stalwart, has created a gritty and wine-soaked world that more-or-less operates at the behest of organized crime. These syndicates, in penetrating governments and the police, have largely sheltered themselves from mainstream prosecution, allowing them to conduct their consequential business well outside of the light of day. This cunning investment has short-circuited resistance against them, leaving it to individual journalists, policeman and social crusaders to fight against a monolithic machine they have no hope of destroying.

Which leads us to Mr. Izzo's most singular and effective creation, the battered and beleaguered Fabio Montale, a man who staggers from crisis to crisis without plans, without hope, and certainly without any reasonable expectation of victory. Fabio is aware of all of these truths. And yet, miraculously, despite the pain this world has caused him, he persists in pursuing it precisely because of what said world has cost him. This may be insane; it's most certainly foolhardy; and it will someday, undoubtedly, get him killed. But whatever flaws of character Fabio may possess -- a closed-off heart, an inability to relate to the women he loves --, he is not a coward. He introspects. He reminds himself of what others deserve and he uses this motivation to deal small defeats to a darkness that will endure until long after he is gone.

the Marseilles Trilogy is rich with detail, with chaotic streets and crowded bars, with cynical racism and elicit drugs, with new music and old loves, all of which provide a rich tapestry around its reluctant hero, Fabio. But for all its sensory hedonism, for all that its leading man is worthy of the silver screen, its plots leave a great deal to be desired. At practically every turn, Mr. Izzo falls back on the old chestnut of the murdered woman Fabio could have loved to galvanize him into action. This an effective trope, one that has withstood the test of time, but when overused so blatantly, it gestalts into a writer's crutch that, when kicked away, leaves no other foundation upon which the tale can rest. Moreover, the resolution of these stories are so dizzyingly swift that they are in no way clear or coherent. The author's reluctance to grant Fabio any major victories is understandable in light of his overall message, but his manipulations, to keep Fabio from anything like triumph, is too readily apparent. The reader is never allowed to feel as though his conclusions are organic outcomes of real scenarios.

Nonetheless, The Marseilles Trilogy and the genre in which it has found such a profitable home, is a valuable work that not only speaks to the challenges faced by lone crusaders and large institutions trying to resist the infestations of crime, but to the kind of society that results from allowing the wielders of corruption to operate with relative impunity. These lessons grant these works their potence and their passion. (3/5 Stars)

A dark journey through L.A.'s underground in Drive

From The Week of July 1st, 2013

Until science solves for the mysteries of the mind, the age-old debate of nature versus nurture will continue to percolate, propelled onward by the desire to understand unfathomable humanity. Why do some of us become saints and others sociopaths? Why do some of us have indomitable tempers while others possess uninterruptable serenity? Why do some of us drive ourselves to the heights of fame and fortune while others never make it out of our neighborhoods? Questions and accusations, theories and excuses, abound, some of them helpful, others generated from bias. Until we have a roadmap to human nature, we're left with only our intuitions and our suppositions, a circumstantial uncertainty played to eerie effect in James Sallis' brief but bloody piece of crime fiction.

A son of the American Southwest, birthed from a home of deep dysfunction, the Driver moves through life as if it were a movie. He remembers meals and jobs, girls and cars, but the rest is sloughed off as vestigial to his Polaroid life. Lacking even a name, he is a quiet ghost in the City of Angels, performing car stunts for Hollywood by day and acting as the wheelman for criminals by night, a dual life that seems to suit him quite well, that is, until two transplanted connected gangsters from old New York decide to tear up the rulebook to their underworld game, stalking him for ill-gotten gains Driver would have happily returned if they had the courtesy to ask nicely. That they don't is, for Driver, causes belli and the fallout promises to be spectacular.

Barely a hundred pages, Drive is nearly a perfect piece of dark, summer reading. Emerging from the swift, flashy tradition of crime fiction popularized by Elmore Leonard et al, Mr. Sallis has constructed a series of dramatic, even moving vignettes that act upon the narrative like flashbulbs, momentarily shedding light on fragments of time in the life of a man (Driver) who has only a foothold in our world, the rest of his nature lost to some netherspace of deeds and apparitions. Consequently, Driver, the only character who claims more than perhaps ten percent of the tale, is a person barely glimpsed, his motives hidden behind a creepily affectless facade that Mr. Sallis has miraculously imbued with magnetism, not repulsiveness.

Reducing his cast to but one serious player is, for the author, a toss of the dice, a roll made in the confident hope that Driver will captivate readers. And he does. For he is not a simple monster who demands that we accept his nihilism-as-parable for 21st-century America. Rather, he is a deeply damaged person who has come to imprint upon the world certain codes of conduct that are, for him, inviolate. This is not some ancient skein of honor upon thieves co-opted from the Mediterranean. It is the means of his survival in a world that, without his rules, is completely inexplicable. In this, is just like everyone else he shares the world with. The difference rises only when we contemplate the particular codes which, for a man who does not seem to feel pain, much less emotion of any kind, are quite apart from the ones we would know. This is why he is a creature of fascination. He is a puzzle, not an animal.

There are other pleasures here, certainly. Mr. Sallis' Los Angeles operates in that entertaining pretend space of urban cities devoid of law-enforcement, a world fully endorsed by Hollywood that suggests that civilization is merely a series of encounters and exchanges moderated by the threat of violence and the possession of power. This may be absurd, but it is also profoundly appealing, offering up a glimpse of an unrestrained life that our savage sides long to experience. It is the forbidden sandbox of no holds barred that we all left behind AS toddlers learning that we had to accept society's chains in exchange for life. This adrenaline hit never gets old.

A rewarding read... (4/5 Stars)

The Moreau Series by S. Andrew Swann

From The Week of October 08, 2012 Playing god is a tricky game. For as much as we have summoned the technical and cognitive powers to master various scientific disciplines, we are in no way divine. We lack that wealth of wisdom and understanding, of patience and vision, possessed by such theoretical beings. And yet, our expertise in the sciences has given us the keys to unlock the doors to the properties of the life around us, to alter the very genes upon which these organisms live and grow. Are these not the powers of god? And if so, do we not owe it to the life that we create that we take on the responsibilities of parenthood, of stewardship? These are vital questions we will all be forced to confront in the decades ahead, decades defined by genetic engineering and depleted resources. They are questions Mr. Swann confronts in his fascinating if overly bombastic series.

By the middle of the 21st century, war will have utterly reconfigured the world we know. From japan to India, Asia, including the Middle East, will be a wasteland, the devastated gestalt of several disconnected conflicts now known simply as the Pan-Asian War. Refugees from that consequential conflict have found their way to Europe and North America, further fraying the already decaying social safety nets present in those marginally healthier regions of the globe. Worse than the refugees, though, are the Moreau, genetically engineered soldiers from the Pan-Asian War which have flooded into the still-standing cities of the west.

The result of experiments designed to bestow upon the human form the many gifts of the animal kingdom, the Moreau are halfmen, humans crossed with strains of feline, rodent, ursine and canine. Blessed with speed and skill, claw and tooth, these fearsome creatures, made for war, have bred with one another, producing offspring who, while possessed of genes engineered for combat, have never experienced the depravities of the battlefield. No, these second generation Moreau know only the ghettos of the west into which they were born. These so-called Moritowns are 21st century slums, places of death and disease which have been scarred by neglect and exploitation. For other than the purposes of relieving their fetishistic urges, the humans who created the Moreau want nothing to do with them now that the wars are over. After all, the Moreau are walking, talking reminders of the abandonment of their own morality and forsaken responsibilities.

Into this tangled web of corrupt geopolitics and twisted science are dropped a loosely connected group of three genetic experiments, each of whom have found some kind of home in this challenging environment. Nohar Rajasthan is the son of a martyred deserter from the Pan-Asian War. A tiger strain, he rolls his talent for finding people into a career as a private investigator which lands him in the heart of a strange and explosive conspiracy. While clawing his way to the truth, he befriends angel Lopez, a young, Peruvian rabbit breed left for dead in the slums of Cleveland where Nohar was born, and encounters Evi Isham, an government asset formerly of Israeli intelligence engineered to be the perfect human soldier. Together and separately, they pry apart bits of a massive, multi-pronged coverup, the exposure of which is bound to completely transform human civilization.

Though infected by its own strain of over-the-top blockbusterism, The Moreau Series successfully imagines a near-future world contorted by human arrogance and selfishness. Mr. Swann, who went on to pen an excellent trilogy that build on this dystopian foundation, allows Nohar, Evi and angel to each feature in their own volume of this chronicle, a decision which permits us to become intimately familiar with the quirks and needs of the various forms of Moreau. Mr. Swann may not have the most creative prose, but what he lacks here in the way of polish he more than makes up for in inventiveness. For he's constructed a plausible, if grim, world, welded atop this morass of crippled ethics and broken dreams a vicious conspiracy, and wrapped this lethal package in layers of Hollywood thunder and 1940s-style whodoneits which hold together passably well. It's a conglomeration of styles and influences which neatly mirror Mr. Swann's Moreau who are themselves a hodgepodge of various genetic sources.

To whatever extent The Moreau Series is flawed in execution, it more than amply earns the benefit of the doubt by asking thoughtful questions that will inevitably make themselves the centerpiece of mainstream discourse in the years ahead. The Moreau are sentient weapons. They are things created by humanity to serve a single, destructive purpose. When that purpose is completed, they are abandoned, unwanted, subjects of an ugly chapter in history that humanity is ashamed to even acknowledge, let alone admit to. This is, of course, the natural result of innovation without wisdom, of creation without understanding. For all of the issues the Moreau face would have been perfectly obvious to their creators if they paused for a moment's thought. But no, driven by the necessities of war, and unhindered by conscience, they blazed forth and created a new race of beings that quickly discover their gods are profoundly flawed. We should all hope that, when our future selves inevitably grapple with precisely these dilemmas, they are not so shortsighted.

As engaging as it is hampered... The Moreau Series is not Mr. Swann's finest work, but there is much here to keep fans of ethics, science and combat well-entertained. (3/5 Stars)

The Throne of Amenkor Trilogy by Joshua Palmatier

From The Week of May 07, 2012

Though shared responsibility is, at present, the most generally advantageous method for decision-making, for a group, in a time of peace, other, more authoritarian resources must be marshalled in a time of war. Democratic ideals, which serve society so well in relatively tranquil moments, become slow and inefficient when time is short, when the stress of the group's survival is pressing upon every possible course of action. At such pivotal junctures, the wisdom or strength of an individual can often rise above the confusion of egalitarianism, imposing decisiveness and focus upon a problem that requires swift action. We need only glance at the history of the Roman Republic to be awash in examples of the efficiencies of dictatorial power.

But what if the chosen dictator is not ready for that power? What if, having been selected because of talent and necessity, the individual is ill-prepared for the crisis to come? Is the individual's natural talent, combined with his will to survive, enough to obliterate doubt, the fear of choosing badly? Or is unreadiness a fatal flaw that will be the dictator's downfall before the virtues for which he was chosen can be properly brought to bear? This is the intriguing question that occupies the heart of Mr. Palmatier's dark, competent trilogy. It serves the series well.

Perched at the edge of a western sea, Amenkor is a powerful city state that, for 1,500 years, has been governed by the Skewed Throne. The gestalt of now mostly forgotten magics, the throne is a metaphysical construct that harbors the personalities, and perhaps even the souls, of all of the Mistresses who have, over the centuries, claimed it. Bestowing its occupier with the power to see and know all within the city limits of Amenkor, the throne, and the women who have sat upon it, has slowly transformed the city state into a dictatorship in which all the powers of law and order rest in the hands of the Mistress, her first advisor and the Seekers, trained assassins who are the violent manifestation of the Mistress' will.

Despite the omniscience bestowed upon the Mistress by the Skewed Throne, Amenkorian society is still riven by injustice and inequity. The city state has drawn its financial nourishment from a guild of powerful merchants whose profits have elevated the men and women of this class far above the lowly drudges, Amenkorians forced to live and labor under the most impoverished conditions. The Mistresses, who have possessed the influence to amend this injustice, have refused to act against the merchants, no doubt buoyed by the goods they provide the city and its leadership. This fateful decision, however, has effectively divided Amenkor into a city of haves and have nots, the latter of which are invariably abandoned to short, brutal lives.

In The Skewed Throne, the trilogy's first instalment, we meet one such hopeless wretch. Fourteen and orphaned, undernourished and forgotten by the world where people matter, Varis is a shadow, a ragged bundle of anger animated by little more than the will to survive. Given aid by no one, she wouldn't have even lived this long if it weren't for the strange, white fire that, years earlier, washed in from the western sea and momentarily blanketed the coast, imprisoning everyone it touched within nightmares of their own making. About to be raped by a guardsmen, the fire was a blessing for Varis, giving her both the time to escape her attacker and the strength to kill him, taking from him the knife she'd use to keep her alive in the years to come.

When the white fire soon receded, it left devastating change in its wake. While Varis slowly began to explore her new powers, Amenkor's Mistress went swiftly and decisively mad, a reality which has plagued Amenkor ever since. For where the Mistress once sent her Seekers out into the Amenkorian night to bring justice to the beleaguered, now, she lays her mark upon the innocent as often as the guilty. This, for the city's movers and shakers, is an untennible injustice. The resulting struggle for power will position Varis, a here-to-for unconditioned force, at the heart of world-changing events, events which will bring her uncomfortably close to the dangerous, enigmatic throne.

In The Cracked Throne, the second entry in the trilogy, Amenkor has a new Mistress. Hampered by youth but energized by her rare blend of powers, Varis has elevated herself from the dredges to become the ruler of the city who, but weeks ago, didn't even know her name. Forgotten and neglected no longer, she seeks to reform the city's leadership and steer it through a winter made all the more devastating by the recent upheaval that put her upon the throne. And if all these challenges are insufficiently troublesome for a girl who still does not know how to read, let alone rule, an old enemy has left its chain of oceanic islands, searching for a new, more hospitable home. The arrival of these blue-skinned myths from the sea promises to overturn everything Varis knows as she's forced to summon every scrap of wisdom she gleaned from a life in the darkness to fight for her life and for the life of the city with which she is now bound.

In The Vacant Throne, the trilogy's concluding work, the war between the coastal city states and the invading Chorl reaches fever pitch when, having been thwarted in their attempts to claim the amenkorian throne, the blue-skinned islanders turn their attention upon a new target. Having once been home to the man who first conceived of the thrones, Venitte is an old power which still bears some of the scars from the last time it was attacked by the Chorl, an attack which claimed the lives of the wife and children of the inventor of the thrones. Now, centuries later,driven by desperation and domination, the Chorl return to this old battleground in search of a power that has been hidden for centuries, a power that could secure a home for the Chorl on this eastern coast, a power that one throbbed in Amenkor. The power of the thrones...

Though Mr. Palmatier fails to weave together all the disparate threads of his narrative, The Throne of Amenkor is pleasingly realistic Fantasy fiction. Drawing inspiration from Mediterranean geography and mixing in some inventive magic, the author successfully generates an engaging, blood-spattered world hobbled by social inequities and cutthroat politics. What's more, by embedding the narrative in the first person, never allowing the reader to depart from the ultra-pragmatic mind of his heroine, he vividly and disturbingly conveys the life of an orphan abandoned by this society, how her harsh experiences have shaped her into a creature that can only claim to be halfway civilized. Watching the rich and the powerful react to her, seeing their prejudice through her eyes, provides the trilogy some of its best emotional punch.

. But for as much as Varis' journey from forgotten wretch to Mistress of Amenkor entertains, while honoring the rags-to-riches trope, very little of the story's promise is actually realized. The enigmatic White Fire which is used teasingly to ignite the main drama is little more than an afterthought, a weapon shown to the audience in act I that is not fired in act III. Furthermore, the magic that underpins the plot here appears to have been poorly thought through. Feats thought impossible in the first novel are commonplace in the third, even though little time has past and little knowledge acquired to justify such advancements. This gives rise to the strong impression that the author constructed an enemy too powerful for his protagonists, hence the expansion of their talents. These underutilized and inexplicable plot threads prevent this icy trilogy from truly taking flight.

The Throne of Amenkor is inventive work. Its action sequences are as apocalyptic as its social criticism is unsparing. But Varis herself is not strong enough to carry what is otherwise an underperforming plot. Interesting but flawed. 93/5 Stars)

The Virex Trilogy by Eric Brown

From The Week of April 16, 2012

What does it mean to be human? Our bones have been measured, our hearts weighed, our blood analyzed. Our very cells have been dissected, their secrets laid bare under the powerful inquisition of the microscope. But can these metrics of flesh and muscle, reflex and strength, define human? Perhaps our minds are the better arbiter of who we are, oceanic consciousnesses made possible by the gestalt of a trillion neural connections woven into the fabric of our brains. Until science has banished the mysteries of the human mind, the question remains one for philosophers to reason through, their intellectual progress forever hindered by their imperfect understanding of a beautiful system. However, someday soon, neurology will solve for the unknown and we will know what it means to be human and whether or not it is defined by the elusive soul. What will that world look like? Will it be better or worse for the knowing? Mr. Brown muses in his sweeping trilogy.

The year is 2040 and New York has become new India. Widespread environmental collapse has devastated large swaths of inhabited land and left the Big Apple stewing in a mixture of extreme temperatures and monsoon rain which perpetually pound at a treeless, hyper-urban landscape. Refugees from Asia and the American South, fleeing now uninhabitable climbs, have flooded the city, swelling it beyond the capacity of its public services. The police labor to maintain some semblance of law and order, but justice is more often found at the point of a gun in this torrential world in which technology is as ubiquitous as concrete.

As a consequence of the influx of refugees, the city has deputized private investigators into its police force. Though these hybrid cops are permitted to keep their own offices, take their own cases and charge whatever fees the market will bear, they are peace officers, men and women who will, in an ideal world, help to strengthen the palsied arm of the law in feverish New York. Their effectiveness, however, is minimized by a world in which technology is evolving at far too rapid a rate for the law to comprehend, much less grapple with.

In New York Nights, the trilogy's curtain-raiser, we meet One such quasi detective. Hal Halliday is a smart but self-destructive investigator in his 30s who, despite the passage of many years, remains burdened by a traumatic childhood. A refugee of the NYPD, Hal was welcomed into private practice by Barney Kluger, an older, wiser man with tragedies of his own. Together, the partners and friends are submerged into the world of virtual reality (VR), when they are hired to find a missing woman. A trendy technology taking New York by storm, VR is reshaping human interaction. Bars all over the city are buying and renting out Jellytanks, immersive tubs in which humans can lose themselves, their minds transported to a million programmable vistas.

Fearful of VR's social consequences, Virex, an insurgent organization intent upon bringing down the big corporations promoting VR technology, attempt to warn the public about the emotional and physical costs of overusing the emerging technology. But their warnings are largely ignored until a rogue intelligence escapes its VR makers and flees into the Internet where its schemes to be alive and free entangle and devastate a community of alternative Women, several of whom turn up murdered. Hal must reach into his past and the sister he's all-but written off to find a way to stop the emergent AI.

In New York Blues, the trilogy's second instalment, a few dark months have past. Lonely and caseless, Hal has turned to a street kid for companionship. A refugee from the Atlanta Meltdown, Casey is a homeless girl looking for a chance to escape her origins. And so, when Hal offers her a place to stay, she quickly blossoms, becoming not only his connection to the outside world but a key cog in the biggest case of his life. For the Vanessa Artoise, movie star extraordinaire, has just darkened his door with her legendary beauty and she's willing to pay Hal anything to find her missing sister.

Seconds after accepting the case, an attempt is made on Vanessa's life, an effort that galvanizes Hal into action. Sniffing out the sister's trail, however, leads him into the dark and twisted heart of VR where powerful men troll for impressionable girls, exploiting them for the fulfilment of their fantasies and their obsessions. To find Vanessa's sister, Hal will have to confront the very creators of these virtual paradises on their own turf, a disadvantage that will not only endanger him but the few people in this world he cares for.

In New York Dreams, the trilogy culminates with the full realization of VR's potential. Where once it was only safe for humans to spend hours in the Jellytanks before having to exit from perfect hallucinations, now they can spend days in Vr, exploring ever-more-elaborate environments which can be tailored to suit the every whim of the user. How can the real world, with all its flaws and foibles, its pains and disappointments, possibly compete? Virex, which has been warning humanity about this grim future for years now, ought to be poised to best exploit this breakthrough. But the insurgency, once so noisy, has been betrayed. Key operatives at the heart of the conspiracy have been secretly replaced by the enemy.

Rendered toothless, the organization is in no position to halt the conspiracy which claims the lives of several men and women, one of which was once dear to Hal. The investigator might never have known about the deaths were it not for Casey who helps to extract him from his own VR dreams long enough to put him on the conspiracy's cold trail. Will he discover the plans of the mysterious Methuselah Project before it's too late, or will his body, weakened by his addiction to VR, fail him and leave him, like everyone else, helpless before the dawn of a new world?

Though The Virex Trilogy lacks the brilliance of plot and prose necessary for lasting acclaim, its entertaining plots and thoughtful ruminations elevate it above the fray. Mr. Brown's characters are refreshingly human, flawed specimens who lack not only physical beauty but social graces. Instead, they stagger through life, blundering from moment-to-moment, never prepared for what's to come. This faintly autistic take on human nature is both engaging and appropriate for the author's somewhat alarmist future.

There are problems here. For a series named The Virex Trilogy, there's remarkably little Virex about it. The organization, which at times appears to be on the brink of full-blown terrorism, yields its time to the cast of characters who orbit Hal's world. Not until the final novel is Virex explored at any depth and even then it is only elaborated on in the service of the plot. This, along with characters who inexplicably float in and out of the story, leaves far-too-bare the mechanics of plot. Polishing up his tapestry in order to hide the threadbare bits is not Mr. Brown's strong suit.

That said, there's much here to admire. Virtual reality has been explored before, but Mr. Brown takes up this trope not only in the service of his story, but in the interests of exploring its many and varied consequences. In this, he manages to make some thoughtful points about the underpinnings of human interaction and human experience. And so, while the tales told here are otherwise inescapably mundane in their construction, the social critiques woven into them lend life and color to both the world and its inhabitants.

Solidly entertaining... Mr. Brown won't hit many home runs, but he'll rarely strike out either. Instead, he can be consistently relied upon for a good double. There are far, far worse fates. (3/5 Stars)

Low Town by Daniel Polansky

From The Week of January 16, 2011

Of the many blights that can befall a people, surely none are more destructive than injustice. Levelled cities can be rebuilt; devastated economies can be revitalized; lethal plagues can be cured; but a people's broken faith cannot be restored. For the trust of the people is not a stone to be shaped, a formula to be reworked, a disease to be isolated. It is the living embodiment of our faith in institutions that we depend upon daily for the proper functioning of our societies. If they let us down, worse yet, if they sell us out to powerful interests, we are left with no choice but to turn to our own, vigilante remedies which, while bringing some immediate satisfaction, only strengthens chaos in the long term. The end result is the night of nihilism pierced by only the occasional shimmerings of truth. This is Mr. Polansky's lesson in Low Town; he teaches it with violence and vigor.

Tucked within a province of a powerful empire, squatting within the throng of a bustling city, there lies a slum called Low Town. This lawless, rat-infested labyrinth is home to the world's unwanted. Orphans and thieves run the streets while angry men, battered women and those who enable them both cohabit in a jungle of unhealthy shops and unhealthier homes. Few outside its clutches care for it, but they cannot escape events within it, events that will spill out and infect them too.

Known on the street as the Warden, the protagonist and narrator of our story is a crime boss in this den of iniquity. During the administration of his ugly trade, he tries to bring some order to the streets, even if it is the order of the blade and the fist. Some may interpret this nod in the direction of structure as a flicker of altruism, but the Warden may well be just scratching an old itch. After all, prior to his mysterious fall from grace over a woman he may or may not have loved, he was an imperial agent, a detective imbued with the imprimatur of the crown to bring about justice. Before that, he was an officer in the imperial army where he was a witness to events so dark and savage that, all these years later, they will not allow him to sleep peacefully. But if order is in the Warden's blood, he faces the worst week of his life, for in his slum surfaces the mutilated body of a young girl, a girl so grievously wronged she evokes even the Warden's seldom-tapped reservoir of sympathy. Much as he loathes the idea, the Warden may well have to return to his post as an imperial agent, for a little while. A crime so heinous, committed on his territory, cannot go unpunished. But is the Warden ready to grapple with the darkness that lies behind recent events? Is his slum ready for the death it promises?

Though Low Town occasionally stews overlong in its own nihilism, and though certain of its characters are far too mechanical to be considered more than automata, Low Town is an exciting and atmospheric tumble through a splendidly savage world of thieves and slumlords, mages and lordlings, each of whom is wrapped up in one egotistical scheme or another. Adopting the more pleasing conventions of the noir detective novel, Mr. Polansky doubles down on darkness by building atop this grim foundation a world of injustice and misfortune, murder and sacrifice, all while spinning a plot in which redemption can only be brought about by bloodshed. The author's cruel wit is a match for his keen eye for melancholy which, together, bestow an authenticity upon the setting, a world forever on the edge of sliding into the abyss.

Though Low Town has much to recommend it, sharing as it does in the dark traditions established by Misters Morgan, Kearney, and Abercrombie, it is not without flaws. The Warden's mountainman of a best friend is a feeble character whose only purposes here are to be alternately sad and tortured. He, like several of Mr. Polansky's other characters, never advance beyond caricature. However, this blot on the work is balanced by the Warden who is drawn with a kind of authentic and well-meaning cruelty, the likes of which has rarely manifested on paper. If Joe Abercrombie was able to put his fiendish hands on Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, strip him of his magic and torment him for a few thousand years in Hell, Daniel Polansky's Warden might well be the result.

Wonderful noir which balances its fantasy, its mystery and its cultural satire far better than one might expect for an author's first effort. I eagerly await more from Mr. Polansky. (4/5 Stars)

Dark Jenny: Eddie Lacrosse 03 by Alex Bledsoe

From The Week of April 17, 2011

While The Sword-edged Blonde, the novel that kicked off the Eddie Lacrosse series, will keep its place in my affections, it's time for me and Eddie to part ways. For while Dark Jenny takes a more heartfelt stab at pleasing its readers with an engaging plot, the novelty of crossing sword-and-sorcery fantasy with a detective mystery has, unfortunately, worn thin, leaving the flaws of this third Lacrosse adventure naked to the world.

For Eddie Lacrosse, a sword-skilled private investigator, life has been fairly rough of late. If his girlfriends aren't in peril, then royal friends are calling upon him for aid, or damsels are getting him in trouble, or dragons are trying to singe him to a crisp. Fortunately, then, the latest drama to darken Eddie's door comes in the form of a coffin, which arrives, care of Eddie Lacrosse, at the tavern out of which the sword jockey runs his business. But rather than the opening salvo in some dark and painful episode, the coffin sparks a memory which turns into a long and winding yarn Lacrosse weaves for his friends over an afternoon of ales. The story concerns a distant civil war that pitted the noble and the corrupt against one another in a clash for the future of a realm. Lacrosse was caught up in these epic events when, after being arrested under the mistaken assumption that he was involved in a plot to kill the beautiful queen Jennifer, he was forced to win his freedom by first convincing his captors of his innocence and then working for them to uncover the identity of the true assassin. None of this is to Eddie's liking, but as events develop, as his life is threatened, as the fates of armies and citizens hang in the balance, he plunges himself into a tangled web of ruthless plots and royal secrets in hopes of finding, at the bottom, a truth that might save a kingdom.

All fiction asks its devourers to suspend some measure of disbelief in order to maximize reader enjoyment. Fair enough. But suspension of such disbelief does not extend to looking the other way while inanities of plot are perpetrated upon them. Lacrosse' attendance at the court function in which the attempted murder takes place, alone, is poorly explained, but it's made worse when he is inexplicably fingered for the crime just to generate, for the novel, enduring antagonists who can hold a non-sensical grudge against him, popping up every now and again to make Lacrosse's life difficult. More over, if you wanted to get to the bottom of a crime, would you hire one of the possible perpetrators of said crime to run its investigation? Doesn't seem likely. From here, matters don't much improve as Mr. Bledsoe pulls out at least two well-worn tropes of SF to provide the framework for a mystery bogged down in hopeless villains and stupendously heroic knights.

Dark Jenny is the literary equivalent of a day old bag of chips. There's still enjoyment in eating them, but their staleness can't be ignored. Mr. Bledsoe is still willing to shock his readers with occasional explosions of the dark intensity that made The Sword-edged Blonde throb with excitement, but these moments are few and far between in a predictable and tired tale. (2/5 Stars)

Finch by Jeff Vandermeer

From The Week of April 03, 2011

Though Finch is undoubtedly one of the weirder pieces of fantasy fiction I've read, and though its pleasures are far more intellectual than visceral, Mr. Vandermeer's inventive mind and splintered prose make this half-mad piece an engaging, fascinating slog.

In Ambergris, a sprawling, decaying metropolis operating on an early 20th century level of technology, John Finch has bowed to the necessities of the moment and taken up a position with the Ambergris police. A detective, he and his fellows are little liked by the oppressed citizens of Ambergris who are subsisting under the authoritarian rule of the Gray Caps, a race of mushroom-like beings who, after being suppressed by humanity and locked into the earth, have Risen to exact their revenge. As a consequence, the police are viewed as collaborators with the enemy when the reality is, as always, far more complicated. Finch, for one thing, has a past which suggests he has no more love for the Gray Caps than the people do. But love or hate, he must answer the call when a human and a gray cap are found dead in a hotel room, the latter with his lower body missing. Armed with few clues and more enemies than he can count, Finch's sanity is tested as he investigates the crime, only to discover that the universe is infinitely more complex than even he, a man of some education and intellect, can imagine.

At some 350 pages, Finch spends more time plodding than it should, indulging in numerous depressing, introspective episodes in which Finch tries to puzzle out the meaning of existence, how he fits into that scheme and how to reconcile his family's past with the man he's become. But though these broodings are tiresome, the world of Ambergris is enchantingly diverse, populated with enigmatic humans and profoundly alien villains. Mr. Vandermeer establishes a world fatigued to the breaking point by war and then introduces into these foggy, nihilistic streets the personal politics of Vichy France, or any other oppressed metropolis in which the natives under foreign rule must navigate the thorny ethics of cooperation and rebellion. Intellectually, Mr. Vandermeer's willingness to play with existential questions of reality and identity, both species and personal, engaged my mind to the extent that, even through the book's more ponderous sections, my attention was not allowed to wander. Finch does build slowly, but its cacophonous, apocalyptic conclusion brings the story to a well-earned and satisfying conclusion.

It will be too weird for some, but for those who are willing to entertain genre-bending fiction -- Finch does share some thematic genes with the Eddie Lacrosse series by Alex Bledsoe --, and for pursuers of dark, inventive fiction, money spent here is unlikely to be a mistake. Just... Maybe follow it up with a happier tale. (3/5 Stars)

The Century of The Soldier: Monarchies of God by Paul Kearney

From The Week of January 16, 2011

In this final, omnibus instalment of Monarchies of God, Mr. Kearney gathers up all the myriad threads he spent so much time spinning out in Hawkwood And The Kings and pulls on them, hard, until all his characters and all their dark deeds converge in a series of bloody battles for the future of Normannia. Though this segment of Mr. Kearney's dark, epic fantasy is better for not being burdened with the necessity of introducing so many lands, and schemers, and magical powers, it is worse for the aimlessness which plagues important segments of its story.

The Century of The Soldier presides over the next seventeen years of Normannia, the war-plagued continent the reader was introduced to in the first instalment. The Merduk armies have entrenched themselves, consolidating the gains they made in Normannian lands, while they prepare for a new offensive which will finish off the five, weakened, fragmented kingdoms that, up till now, have opposed them. Barring their advance is Corfe, a once shattered soldier who has channeled his grief over the death of his wife into a kind of controlled, reckless vengeance against the Merduks. He has proven so successful, in spite of ignorant and prejudiced opposition within his own kingdom, that royal men, entitled men, great men, have all been forced to acknowledge his supremacy. But as Corfe is organizing the defense of Normannia, two other major events are playing out beyond both his comprehension and his control.

Alberec, a devoted monk in the service of the Ramusian church, has made a terrifying and world-altering discovery in the church archives that could change the direction of the Normannian-Merduk war. But even while he attempts to communicate this vital information to the leadership on both sides, a dark power is crossing the western sea. Yes, captain hawkwood has returned to Normannia, dragging with him knowledge of the fabled continent and the magicians and shapeshifters who live there in vicious harmony. Hawkwood's warnings give the western-most kings time to build and outfit a great fleet which will sail out to meet the Dweomer threat and stop it in its tracks. But weakened by the Ramusian purges which consigned so many of their own magicians to the flames, the fleet finds itself up against a vengeful, authoritarian power soon to sweep across Normannia and make the war with the Merduk hordes seem like kids playing at soldiers.

There is so much here. Mr. Kearney's willingness to journey down the darkest roads enables him to shock his readers. For he is perfectly willing to visit existential calamities upon his protagonists, calamities from which some of his characters never recover. Mr. Kearney's fine sense of poetic justice is far more powerful than his desire to protect his heroes, all of whom suffer more under his hand than do the heroes of any other author I can think of. Perhaps the series' greatest virtue, though, is its ability to convey the importance of information, knowledge. Many of the characters here would act differently, helping to avoid many of the series' disasters, if they had a clear idea of the big picture. But they don't. And so their narrowmindedness obligates them to act on what little they do know, causing them to make decisions that do nothing but aid their enemies. With so many other fantasy series, protagonists escape their ignorance, learning enough about their foes to go back a second time and heroically conquer, but Mr. Kearney's tale operates by a much more realistic code. Sometimes, simply, there are no second chances.

But if The Century of The Soldier offers the reader many pleasures, its sins keep it from being truly great. In addition to its rushed conclusion, two or three of its significant plot threads simply end without conveying any meaning at all. This may be Mr. Kearney's point, that sometimes things happen for no reason. But as respectable as this sentiment may be, there has to be some purpose behind every element of a story's plot. Without purpose, the reader cannot extract any meaning. And without meaning, there's very little point to investing the time to read the book.

Nonetheless, Mr. Kearney is willing to take the reader on a journey that no other author I can think of is willing to lead. The degree to which he is able to capture the cruelties of war, feudal authoritarianism and religious extremism is Orwellian. This is best exemplified by the scene with Arja some two-thirds of the way through this volume. It is so abhorrent, it is painful to read, but it is a vivid demonstration of what war is really like, of what some people in the world endure every day, and what those of us who want to romanticize war should never forget. Powerful stuff, but not without its problems. (3/5 Stars)

Hawkwood And The Kings: The Monarchies of God by Paul Kearney

From The Week of January 16, 2011

Though it lacks the violence characteristic of Joe Abercrombie and Richard K. Morgan, the sheer nihilism of Mr. Kearney's Monarchies of God makes it unquestionably one of the most darkly riveting series of epic fantasy I've ever read. Originally published in five, modestly sized volumes, it has been reprinted in a two part omnibus edition which sucks the reader down into a world modelled on Renaissance Europe rendered in all its gritty glory.

On the continent of Normannia, peace has been, until recently, more or less maintained through a loose alliance of five kingdoms knitted together by political ties and by a common religion which, since its rise some six centuries earlier, has grown in pomp and power. But now two events have shattered the peace and thrown Normannia into chaos. The first of these is external. The Merduk armies, the military force of a distant sultanate resembling the Ottoman empire, has poured into Normannia and shattered one of the continent's greatest cities. The ripple effects from this disaster leads to the second, internal event, the panicking of the Ramusian (read Christian) church which has decided to fight this existential threat by rounding up the continent's magic users and throwing them into mass pyres in a systematic attempt to exterminate the Dweomer, or magical talent, from the continent. But this burning does nothing to improve Ramusian fortunes which worsen when, in reaction to the rumored death of the Pope, a power-hungry cardinal is raised to the church's highest office, a promotion which divides the five kingdoms into two camps, one siding with the new pope and the other siding with the old, the blind Macrobius, who has been saved from the Merduk invasion by Corfe, a young soldier who believes his wife dead at Merduk hands.

In this intense and multi-faceted tale, the narrative primarily focuses on two main protagonists. Richard Hawkwood is a sea captain who returns to Normannia from a recent voyage only to find the Ramusian purge in full swing. Disgusted by this display of zealous ignorance, captain Hawkwood accepts a commission from his king to sail a powerful nobleman and his entourage west, away from Normannia and towards a fabled continent upon which the nobleman, Murad, intends to establish a colony. Neither Hawkwood nor Murad realize, though, that the expedition has been packed with fleeing magicians who are hoping for a new start away from the purges. Meanwhile, Corfe, the aforementioned soldier, shattered by the loss of his wife, delivers Macrobius from peril before going some way to assuaging his guilt for fleeing the Merduk invasion by mounting a spirited defense at Ormann Dyke, now the primary fortress standing between the Merduk armies and penetration into the heart of Normannia. But when even Ormann Dyke falls, Corfe has to flee again, this time back to his native kingdom where, in rallying the defenses there, he takes the first few tentative steps towards his destiny as a hero of legend.

Hawkwood And The Kings is possessed by an incredible, frenetic darkness. The action here has the fast-paced franticness of a headlong flight from a nightmare, faces only captured in flashes as the characters try to stay ahead of their impending doom. But while this rampant chaos lends the tale an awesome energy, it also exacts a price. Mr. Kearney's cast of characters runs well into the dozens and many of these play prominent roles in the story. Trying to keep track of them all while absorbing the world and its conflicts proved, at least for me, daunting. But this lack of context is the only major oversight in a volume -- the first of two -- which packs a serious punch, both in its action and its historical allusions. The magicians as stand-ins for the witches burned by Christian churchmen? Brilliant and devastating. The Merduk-Ramusian conflict as a stand-in for the Ottomans versus the Byzantines? Potent and well-drawn. Wrap all this up in a thin layer of the harshness of life for the average soul living under feudalism and you have both historical critique and white-hot action packaged into a single gift of literature that won't soon be forgotten. Grim and difficult at times, but well worth the patience it demands. (4/5 Stars)

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie

From The Week of December 26, 2010
Is it possible to enjoy being repeatedly punched, hard, in the gut? Until I first encountered Mr. Abercrombie, my answer was a definitive no, but now, infected by the masochism of this most noir of British fantasy authors, perhaps I can find pleasure in a story that leaves me wide-eyed and whimpering.

Best Served Cold returns the reader to the universe of The First Law where, on some godsforsaken planet, a series of city states have been, for 20 years, lurching towards barbarism. Providing the momentum for this slide into darkness is the egomania of Grand Duke Orso, a noble who, though he indulges in most of the seven deadly sins, reserves a special affection for avarice for power. His main instruments, the Murcattos, sibling mercenaries who have, through ruthlessness, risen up through the ranks of a mercenary army to find themselves commanders of its fickle fidelity. Monza, the sister and elder of the pair, is loyal to the duke until one too many victories in his name elevate her and her men just a shade too high up in the estimation of the city states for Orso's liking. His subsequent betrayal of Monza cuts so deep that she devotes herself to Orso's downfall, thinking of nothing else but the achievement of that one, bloody aim. Companioning her on her vengeful odyssey are a group of hired hands who count among them a master poisoner, a savage Northman, a lethal madman and a reformed drunk. And yet, for all that they are misfits, they each can lay claim to the kind of cruel talents that would make it unwise for anyone to trouble them in a dark alley.

Mr. Abercrombie specializes in pain and suffering. Few, if any, of his characters escape his nihilistic plots unscarred. But though this grimness can be off-putting, the resulting savagery charges his work with memorable explosiveness. Indeed, Best Served Cold, a novel that can be read without prior knowledge of The First Law is essentially a series of thunderous detonations which familiarize the reader with true shock and awe. But for as much as Mr. Abercrombie can lay waste to his world with biblical heartlessness, there's subtlety here as well, an understanding of human nature that brings his characters to life. Monza is so focused on the singular goal of vengeance that she gives no time whatsoever to its costs to her own soul, much less to the lives of her companions. More importantly, she gives no thought at all to the consequences of success, allowing Mr. Abercrombie to paint a vivid portrait of what life is like after the devil is dethroned without a plan in mind for the aftermath. The first 50 pages are exceptional; the remainder is solid enough to bring it home, bloody and unbroken. 4/5 Stars)

The Girl Who Played With Fire: Millennium Trilogy 02 by Stieg Larsson

From The Week of August 29, 2010

The first novel in Mr. Larsson's Millennium trilogy thundered onto the literary scene with its antihero protagonists and its atypically graceful mystery. And so it would come as no surprise to me if this second installment sold as well as the first, as fans hungry for more Blomkvist and Salander divest bookstores the world over of their many copies. I would be equally willing to wager, however, that fan enjoyment of The Girl Who Played With Fire was far below that of its progenitor because this is, in every way, an inferior book.

Flush with the successful solving of the Vanger cold case, Mikael Blomkvist and his magazine have justifiably earned reputations for their willingness to take on the most controversial of subjects. And so there's no hesitation from Blomkvist when he's approached to run a story about sex trafficking in Sweden. But when the two journalists who researched the explosive piece turn up dead, around the same time the body of Lisbet Salander's abusive guardian is discovered by Swedish authorities, Blomkvist is forced to ask uncomfortable questions about Salander, his one-time partner who has since disappeared without a trace. The police finger Salander for all three killings, a reality which obligates Blomkvist to exonerate Salander while he pursues the real murderer of his two colleagues. All this leads Blomkvist down a dark road, a road straight into Lisbet Salander's torturous past, a past from which few escape.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was not without its salaciousness, but the success of that novel, and indeed the success of Nordic Noir generally, lies in the extent to which the crimes being investigated are, by non-Scandinavian standards, fairly tame. Its strength lies in its innocence, in its absence of splashy gore and irredeemable evil. Here, Mr. Larsson threw all of that away, substituting the cold grace of his first novel with the sadistic sex and the hackneyed "I am your father Luke" tropes which characterize crappy crime fiction. What's more, Mr. Larsson completely fails to sell us on Salander's guilt, a failure compounded by the pain of having to sit through half the book while everyone but Blomkvist blindly gropes towards this obvious conclusion. And then to have these 600 pages culminate in a scene straight out of you can't kill me Hollywood? Not good enough.

The Girl Who Played With Fire needed to be shorter by a good 200 pages, and a lot less cliched, to meet the standard set by The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. That worthy effort will live on in my memory, but this here has made me doubt if the third installment will deserve even a look. A shame. (2/5 Stars)

Burn Me Deadly: Eddie Lacrosse 02 by Alex Bledsoe

From The Week of August 29, 2010

disappointment is all the more poignant when it is wholly unexpected. On the heels of the success of The Sword-edged Blonde, my high hopes for this second novel in the sword-and-sorcery/noir-detective crossover series from Mr. Bledsoe were shattered. The individual novels within detective series often stand alone, with only a handful of subtle callbacks to prior novels, but the fantasy setting here made me expect more of a connection to its excellent progenitor. Instead, I received a somewhat muddled tale of damsels and dragons which was too goofy to earn the proper gravitas.

Good deeds never go unpunished. Eddie Lacrosse, a swordsman who is what passes for a private investigator in his kingdom, is riding home one night when his offer to help a damsel in obvious distress draws him into a violent confrontation with a gang of thugs who nearly take his life. Lacrosse, who escapes the hangman's noose, has only two clues, the voice of a torturer and the polished boots of the ringleader. From here, he starts an investigation which will not end until royal secrets and mystic powers have had their say, culminating in the return to the kingdom of fearsome creatures thought long gone.

The mystery here doesn't hold a candle to that which both animated and memorably darkened The Sword-edged Blonde. Withithout that, and with the roster of characters largely constricted to Lacrosse, some damsels, and a handful of villains, there's not a lot here to embrace. We know from the first novel that Mr. Bledsoe has the skill to draw from the strengths of different genres to create an exciting, literary amalgam, but Burn Me Deadly simply does not ignite as its predecessor did. It's sword-and-sorcery themes are barely above the level of Dungeons and Dragons and its detection component is hardly noticeable. I will probably read the next entry, but my enthusiasm has been all but snuffed out. (2/5 Stars),/B>
disappointment is all the more poignant when it is wholly unexpected. On the heels of the success of The Sword-edged Blonde, my high hopes for this second novel in the sword-and-sorcery/noir-detective crossover series from Mr. Bledsoe were shattered. The individual novels within detective series often stand alone, with only a handful of subtle callbacks to prior novels, but the fantasy setting here made me expect more of a connection to its excellent progenitor. Instead, I received a somewhat muddled tale of damsels and dragons which was too goofy to earn the proper gravitas.

Good deeds never go unpunished. Eddie Lacrosse, a swordsman who is what passes for a private investigator in his kingdom, is riding home one night when his offer to help a damsel in obvious distress draws him into a violent confrontation with a gang of thugs who nearly take his life. Lacrosse, who escapes the hangman's noose, has only two clues, the voice of a torturer and the polished boots of the ringleader. From here, he starts an investigation which will not end until royal secrets and mystic powers have had their say, culminating in the return to the kingdom of fearsome creatures thought long gone.

The mystery here doesn't hold a candle to that which both animated and memorably darkened The Sword-edged Blonde. Withithout that, and with the roster of characters largely constricted to Lacrosse, some damsels, and a handful of villains, there's not a lot here to embrace. We know from the first novel that Mr. Bledsoe has the skill to draw from the strengths of different genres to create an exciting, literary amalgam, but Burn Me Deadly simply does not ignite as its predecessor did. It's sword-and-sorcery themes are barely above the level of Dungeons and Dragons and its detection component is hardly noticeable. I will probably read the next entry, but my enthusiasm has been all but snuffed out. (2/5 Stars)

The Sword-edged Blonde: Eddie Lacrosse 01 by Alex Bledsoe

From The Week of August 22, 2010

It is my contention that, to find quality fiction, one of the most successful courses is to seek out genre-bending novels. These are stories which either mash two genres together, or which do not easily conform to a single genre. Why is this true? Simple. This is where you will find authors who are unwilling to follow in the tired footsteps of those who came before them, authors who aspire to do and say more than can be done and said by yet another iteration within an established genre. These authors will fumble and misstep like the rest of us -- they are human after all --, but their willingness to venture forth into relatively uncharted territory ensures that, for the reader, the ride will be new and exciting. Mr. Bledsoe did not himself come up with the re-imagining of the noir detective story in a fantasy-fiction setting, but it is a young and fertile field in which The Sword-edged Blonde is a worthy contributer.

If one transported the 1930s noir detective into a kingdom of swords and sorcery, then Eddie Lacrosse would be the result, a world-weary, ex-mercenary swordsman whose eye for a good woman is about as poor as his ability to avoid trouble. Lacrosse is what passes for a private investigator in his corrupted monarchy, working out of the upstairs floor of a tavern managed by one of his many mysterious friends. He works hard at his mostly thankless craft while trying to forget an event in his past which has left upon him a deep scar. But when Philip, a childhood friend and now king of a neighboring realm, asks for Lacrosse's aid in exonerating Philip's queen of a grievous crime, Lacrosse is unceremoniously dumped into his dark past, revisiting it even while he sets out to clear a wronged queen's sullied name.

Mysteries depend upon their plots and their characters to win the day and in neither case does Mr. Bledsoe let us down. The former is suitably twisted in knots, introducing us into a world of hard lives and even harder gods and with very little justice to be found anywhere. The latter are lead by Lacrosse, a charming rogue with a heart blackened by time and loss. But he is not as irredeemable as he would have us believe, as evidenced by the strength of his ties to Philip which have the power to provoke him to right a wrong not of his making. The secondary players are just as strong. From the creatures inhabiting Lacrosse's home base at the tavern to Kathy, the messenger woman who travels with him for much of the book, they enliven a tale Lacrosse could not have carried on his own. Couple all this with a suitably dark conclusion and one has, in their hands, a tight, well-imagined story that is as charming in its unconventionality as it is disturbing in its darkness. Enjoyable. (3/5 Stars)

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Millennium Trilogy 01 by /Stieg Larsson

From The Week of July 25, 2010

It took me some time to get to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Fiction this popular tends to make my nose turn up in literary snobbishness. Shame on me! This most famous entrant in the genre of Nordic Noir is not only excellent and suspenseful, it is icy, passionate, terrifying and thrilling, traits which, when blended into a single book, can only please its readers.

Though this effort by Stieg Larsson is primarily an investigation into an old murder which haunts an eminent, Swedish family, a thick vein of social critique elevates the piece into rarified air. Mr. Larsson, who spent many years as a journalist uprooting truth in the dark corners of Swedish society, does not mute his voice here, speaking quite clearly through his cynical and yet passionate protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, himself a journalist. Blomkvist, who is tricked into disgrace after he pursues a truth inconvenient to powerful forces inside Swedish society, is at a low ebb when the powerful patriarch of a Swedish, industrialist family contacts him in hopes that he might turn his investigative talents to solving the 40 year old murder of his beloved daughter. Though such an investigation offends Blomkvist's Leftist sensibilities, he agrees to pursue the matter, enlisting the aid of an unlikely sidekick who transforms an interesting and inventive story into an instant classic.

Lisbeth Salander is one of those characters, a creature of such page-burning intensity that it's a wonder she hasn't combusted the book. If Blomkvist is Larsson himself, Salander is the main thrust of his social criticism for she is the violent and possibly murderous product of a corrupted foster system haunted by some truly terrifying perverts. Salander, whose vengeance won't fail in putting the reader's jaw on the floor, transfixes with her cold, almost autistic lack of affect. Her vengeful heart is paired up with a logician's brain which excels at computer hacking, a talent crucial to Blomkvist's investigation.

Mr. Larsson won't win any literary awards for his prose, the stiffness of which may also be the product of the translation from the original Swedish, but his characters are wonderfully alive. They and the core mystery, propel this story of darkness and vengeance towards a fantastic conclusion. Never have there been two unlikelier heroes, and yet it is the eccentricities of Blomkvist and Salander that captivate. For good measure, Mr. Larsson adds a dash of scandalous romance between the two, seeming to delight in the fact that Blomkvist is old enough to be Salander's father. But then it is clear that Mr. Larsson loves to play with and prey upon the modesty of his readers.

I've ruminated long on the exceptionalism of this novel, trying to decipher its popularity. For even taking together all its virtues, there are warts here, the elementary prose, the cartoonish villains. There are far better books in the crime genre which have only achieved a fraction of Tattoo's fame. I have two theories. First, the unconventionality of the heroes cannot but enchant. A middle-aged, Leftist journalist burdened by cynicism and facing up to the end of his career, and a computer-hacking, pint-sized rage'a'holic with no morality and no conscience? As a team investigating a murder? It's insane, but it completely works for those of us altogether fed up with James Bond heroes and their bimboish girlfriends. Secondly, despite the graphicness of some of its scenes, Tattoo has a kind of elegance about its central murder. There are no dismembered girls, or blood-thirsty cannibals here. In fact, Mr. Larsson is able to create tension from a story that is remarkably bloodless by the standards of the genre which is all-too-often consumed by voyeuristic abandonment. It's a story about a 40 year old murder, the ultimate cold case. And yet the money, the corruption, the power and the greed all come together to step in for gory detail. There's an admirable grace in this that should not be ignored by authors of the genre.

A great read that is both pulpy and political. Such a creature is rare and, thus, should be treasured. (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)

The Name Of The Wind: The Kingkiller Chronicles 01 by Patrick Rothfuss

From The Week of June 06, 2010

Mr. Rothfuss wastes little time in convincing us that his is an uncommon talent. The sheer dynamic range of this, the first novel of a trilogy, challenges the mind to define it: part coming-of-age tale, part dark fantasy, part redemption epic. However one might wish to categorize it, good, inventive fiction will suffice for me.

The Name of The Wind is, in the main, a chronicle of a great man's life. Kvothe, a hero of his world, has cloaked himself in anonymity and installed himself as the manager of an inn far from the seats of power. Beaten down emotionally, he's a tragic figure, a man who, it seems, events have reduced to a shadow of his former self. But when a chronicler, a recorder of history, comes to the inn, Kvothe is enticed to recount his life story to him, an epic which will take three days to tell. Mr. Rothfuss is not the first author to use his main character as the narrator of his own story, but it's handled here with rare deftness as the tortured Kvothe recedes into his own past to describe his gypsy childhood and, the difficult and penniless years of his adolescence, and his arrival at the great university where he excels upon the imaginings of his teachers. Throughout, we switch back and forth between the past of Kvothe's story and the present in the inn which seems to be plagued by various demons with which Kvothe is all-too familiar. Yes, this is a world with monsters and magic, but Mr. Rothfuss doesn't overuse or abuse them, a self-restraint which escapes most authors of fantasy fiction.

Mr. Rothfuss is, here, a bit self-indulgent at times. There are some rather spectacular events later on in the piece which seemed out-of-step with the realistic, gritty, fantasy tone he was at such great pains to establish. But these off notes don't ruin what is a clever, inventive and entertaining tale, its wonderful darkness tinged by moments of beautiful light. I am definitely anticipating the second installment. (4/5 Stars)

Affinity by Sarah Waters

From The Week of May 23, 2010

Affinity may plod along at times as Ms. Waters does her level best to keep a number of literary balls in the air at once, but an outstanding final third of this dark, Gothic novel is well worth the wait.

Set in Victorian London of the 1870s, our story concerns one Margaret Prior, a thoroughly miserable young woman who, despite her upperclass privilege, has attempted suicide at least once. Though the true cause of Margaret's unhappiness does not out until later in the novel, it's immediately clear that her disposition hasn't been helped by the death of her father. Her mother only worsens the situation by treating Margaret like an invalid, stripping away the young lady's autonomy out of a fear that she'll upset herself and attempt again to end her life. As a result, young Margaret wastes away inside her house, which might as well be a prison, dying a little with each day that passes and generally seeing little light on the horizon.

If one were to compile a list of ideas on how to cheer up a depressed girl, sending her to tour a prison wouldn't be anywhere near my top ten, but this is Victorian England where at least the notion of piety towards the lower classes is encouraged among the well-off. And anyway, visiting, as its called, offers Margaret an opportunity to get out in the world, to seize her own initiative, to be her own woman by engaging with the female prisoners of Millbank. Quickly, Margaret takes a liking to these wretches. In a way, she's quite like them, a societal outcast among a group of societal outcasts. Perhaps this new arrangement will work out for Margaret and give her hope for the future, unless of course her passions run away with her and she gets in too deep with the wrong inmate, an inmate just waiting for an opportunity to reclaim her lost powers.

This is an excellent piece of fiction which channels the Bronte sisters and filters it through the lens of the late 20th century inclination for graphic detail. If Ms. Waters had been just a bit more circumspect in her subject matter, this could have been a 19th century Gothic novel. The prose is wonderfully period and the sense of creeping despair is pitch perfect. My primary quibble here is with Selina Dawes, the inmate with whom Margaret entangles. Quality character, but the flashbacks to her past, while probably necessary, slowed the novel considerably. Ms. Waters clearly wanted to explore the spiritualism of the period, but it always seemed too disconnected from the main, narrative thrust. It certainly never animated as the rest of the piece did. All in all, a great read if you like a little non-gory horror. And as mentioned, the final act is absolutely first class. (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)