Blood, cruelty and a dark future of exploitation in The Bel Dame Apocrypha

From The Week of March 18, 2013

Though it seems, at present, the only effective means of solving international disputes, war exacts a terrible price from its practitioners. Its bombs and bullets, missiles and machine guns, may well be blessings that resolve disagreements through conquest, but with every death, with every cratered building, hatred is inflamed in the hearts of the victims and their families, a hatred that, when properly nourished, prolongs war and ensures that neither side can extract themselves from its embrace without scars that run soul deep. Thus, war's price is more war, war that does not end. For even if the battlefields are cleared and the enemy is in chains, revenge lingers in the minds of the vanquished, making the prospect of peace nothing more than an idealist's fantasy. This Ms. Hurley makes exquisitely and tragically clear in a trilogy that is as difficult as it is engaging.

On a distant world far in humanity's future, civilization has descended into nightmare. After centuries-old attempts to terraform the planet only partially succeeded, the technologists and gene masters who sought to turn this arid planet into a paradise withdrew, leaving their descendents to flounder in the desert sands of a world baked by two vicious suns. Cities on Umayma are isolated havens protected from the worst of the planet's depravities by programmable organic filters which sheathe these ports of civilization, keeping out the grotesquely mutated monstrosities that slither and snake across the rest of its blasted surface. But even though these filters protect the humans from Umayma's natural dangers, they cannot protect them from themselves.

Since the withdrawal of the colony's founders, Umayma's inhabitants have devolved into religious and territorial warfare that has virtually halted technological and societal progress. Umayma's various nation states, each of which zealously practice a form of Islam, have fallen back on the barbarism of biological weaponry to enforce their particular beliefs. This chaos has not only sewn blood feuds into the very fabric of Umaymian life, effectively ensuring conflict for generations to come, it has distorted their faiths and their societies in ways that would be unimaginable to their ancestors. Not only have the traditional gender roles been distorted, but political power has accreted into the hands of the few, while doctrine has cruelly stagnated, offering no solace to those mutated humans who are more creations of Umayma than they are of god.

Through this hellish environment moves Nyxnissa so Dasheem, a rugged, resilient bountyhunter haunted by her past. After a stint on the front lines of her nation's most recent hot war, she was welcomed into the service of the Bel Dames, a government-sanctioned death squad tasked with removing inconvenient and undesirable elements from her country's landscape. The harsh and ruthless Nyx proves herself quite adept at being a Bel Dame, taking pride in her grizzly work, that is, until she is betrayed by her superiors and cashiered from the Bel Dames, abandoned, without friends or income, onto the rough streets of her hometown. Nyx slowly rebuilds her life, hiring on a team of assassins to help her execute the jobs that come her way. Unfortunately for Nyx, no job of significance can take her far enough from the halls of power that she won't be drawn back in to the world of vicious politics and planetary conquest that dismissed her so thoughtlessly. Nyx survived having her title revoked, but can she continue to win and live in a world that seems set upon her death? Only the gods, who have so clearly forsaken Umayma, can say.

As violent as it is bizarre, The Bel Dame Apocrypha is fascinating fiction. A harsh mashup of the science fiction and urban fantasy genres, it is a ruthless and jagged portrayal of lives lived at the very limits of physical and spiritual endurance, on a world too reminiscent of Hell to be coincidental. Sparing neither favorites nor fools, Ms. Hurley is equally savage with her wicked pen, heaping depravities and betrayals upon her beleaguered characters, demanding only that they survive, that they continue, no matter how slowly or painfully, towards their bloody destinies. This cruelty is, at times, wearing, but not since Martin has it been so successfully executed.

Though The Bel Dame Apocrypha reads, superficially, as little more than an exercise in torment, there is something revolutionary here. For Ms. Hurley has used the demands of war as an excuse to completely invert the traditional roles of men and women. In nasheen, the country that doubles as the trilogy's primary setting, the conflict has lasted so long that men are a scarcity, their numbers hurled for so long into distant battlefields that society has re-shaped itself around women who talk and act like men. In fact, were they given male names, their actions and attitudes would be completely indistinguishable from men. Ms. Hurley's is far from the first attempt to envision a society dominated by women. However, it might well be the first attempt to envision a society dominated by women who fill the roles and dispositions commonly held by men. Which begs a fascinating question.

Are the various attitudes and postures adopted by the genders inherent to those genders, or are they, as Ms. Hurley imagines, inherent only to the roles society requires them to fill? In other words, Are female politicians, warriors, assassins and merchants just as likely to be selfish and corrupt as their male counterparts, or do their natural dispositions shield them from the worst excesses of power's abuse? Arguments for both sides are plentiful, but there can be no doubt that Ms. Hurley has clearly and convincingly stated her case, that only circumstance distinguishes the genders from one another, that we only view women more favorably because we've narrowed their opportunities to be corrupted by power. A provocative view that makes for engrossing reading...

There are flaws here. The Bel Dame Apocrypha is ceaselessly violent. There are few chapters not marred by death and dismemberment. Moreover, Ms. Hurley makes virtually no attempt to gently embed the reader in her world. In fact, she seems to go out of her way to be obscure, to gleefully watch as the reader attempts to orient himself in an utterly foreign environment. This will frustrate some, but for those who stay with her trilogy, this bold strategy pays off wen the rhythms and the schemes of Umayma become all-too-painfully familiar. What's more, the trilogy could have benefited from some additional characters, individuals who would have done a better job fleshing out Ms. Hurley's world. As it is, the perspective rarely strays beyond Nyx and her team which can be, at times, tiresome.

In lesser hands, The Bel Dame Apocrypha might well have been little more than an excuse for savagery. But Ms. Hurley has imagined a world as rich and different as it is dark and cruel. From its organic technology to its paternalistic women, it churns out surprises and profundities with equal measure. This is in no way fare for the weak of heart or stomach, but for those looking for an adrenaline-fuelled ride through an outer circle of Hell, look no further. (4/5 Stars)

Night Watch: The Watch 1 by Sergei Lukyanenko

From The Week of November 12, 2012 Until we better understand the laws of our universe, destiny will remain a tempting enigma. For if destiny exists as a force in our world, then we are relieved of responsibility for the choices we make. After all, in such a world, the arcs of our lives are predetermined, their outcomes set. And if we are incapable of altering our individual fates, we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride. Of course, this is a considerably easier position to accept if the outcome in question is positive. What if our destiny is to be hit by a bus, to be betrayed by our most dear, to be kept from the stage of world events? What if our destiny is to never connect with the one we love most? Then destiny's blessings become shackles, the cruel impositions of a heartless god. The certainty in which we took comfort becomes a curse we'd do anything to avoid. Mr. Lukyanenko expands in his interesting but troubled work.

In present-day Moscow, life is not all that it seems. Beneath the radar of the millions of Moscovits living and working, hoping and yearning, a cold war is being waged between two eternal foes, light and dark, good and grim. It is a war with civilized rules, a war with codes of conduct. It is even a war with a declared truce, but this does not make it any less of a conflict, schemes and games, traps and plots designed to ensnare the unwary.

Occasionally, these games spill out into the wider world, affecting the humans who dominate Earth. However, for the most part, they are confined to an underworld populated by the Others, a collection of mages and shapeshifters, witches and demons, who have existed in parallel with humanity for as long as anyone can remember. For centuries, they senselessly clashed, seeking advantage for the side they'd sworn to advance, until the great truce, brokered by both sides, imposed upon all of their members restrictive rules that no one liked but most adhered to. In order to enforce those rules, three powerful bodies were created: the Day Watch, tasked with monitoring the followers of the light; the Night Watch, sworn to police the denizens of darkness; and the Inquisition, a neutral body designed to adjudicate conflicts between the two.

Anton Gorodetsky belongs to the Night Watch. A magician of unremarkable powers, he is caught up in greater events when a supremely gifted sorceress for the light unexpectedly comes into her powers. In love with the young woman, anton attempts to protect her from the machinations of their broader community, but the forces arrayed against him hunger to use her powers for their own games, their own gain, and anton is ill-equipped to stop them. This is the world he knows. This is the world bubbling beneath the surface of human reality. These are the happenings in twilight.

From political machinations to eternal powerplays, from the pettiness of cruelty to the fickleness of joy, Night Watch is an engaging rumination on power, both its uses and its abuses. Casting its protagonists as pawns in a much grander game played by masters of light and shadow, Mr. Lukyanenko re-imagines the daily conflicts in the human world, hedonism versus noble self-restraint, authoritarianism versus individualism, deploying Gorodetsky and his friends as metaphors for each of these forces. In this, he makes a worthy and worthwhile attempt at highlighting the strengths and the pitfalls of each of these positions without biasing the reader in any particular direction. Such a nuanced approach is welcome in its rarity.

However, while the novel's broader themes work well, Night Watch's actual plot leaves a lot to be desired. Not only do Mr. Lukyanenko's characters spend considerable time brooding over and bemoaning their fates while waiting for the story to move forward, the work's plot hangs on several tenuous coincidences which, while explained, fall far short of being convincing. Some of this is surely intentional, as the author attempts to pass onto the reader Anton's mounting frustrations and delusions with the world and his work, but this doesn't entirely account for the awkwardness of the story's construction. Moreover, the degree to which the author transfers the responsibility for the consequential conflicts of the 20th century, and the social movements that were energized by them, from humanity to magic-users is less than satisfying. True, this is fiction; what's more, Mr. Lukyanenko's magicians may well be stand-ins for the human powers who run our world from beyond our purview. However, neither explanation helped much to rinse the distastefulness of this conceit from my mouth.

This is a cold novel that, though it pre-dates Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden by two years, nonetheless channels some of the energy present in both that character and his series. However, Night Watch sacrifices the humor and the superficiality of such works to speak to deeper truths about ethics and the good life that, ironically, function better than the actual plot. The author is trying to make broader points about human existence while couching them in tropes and themes a general audience will enjoy and understand, making the work as commendable as it is flawed. (3/5 Stars)

The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice

From The Week of March 05, 2012

Though there's no doubt that our cultural fascination with the supernatural emanates from any number of subconscious or animalistic sources, the main driver must be our desire for individuality. After all, our lives are characterized by the need to distinguish ourselves from the pack, to stand out, to earn a mate who will help us pass on our genes. Yes, society eventually grinds us down into conformity, but the cumulative effect of this cultural sandpapering cannot touch our formative years. Here, everything is possible. For the passage of time has not yet convinced us that we are not special. It has not yet robbed us of the dream of being unique, of leaving our imprint upon the world. What's more unique than being vested with supernatural powers? What's more special than belonging to that rare other that stands apart from the teeming masses? As a lifelong purveyor of such notions, Ms. Rice taps into this desire and more in her expansive, entertaining and ultimately unoriginal novel.

The 23-year-old son of a wealthy, bay-area surgeon, Reuben Golding is a journalist trying to find himself in a world of possibilities. Infantilized by his overprotective mother and his patronizing girlfriend, both of whom believe him an innocent incapable of wisdom without their intervention, he is a restless and questing soul when he meets the beautiful and elegant Marchent Nideck, a mysterious creature whose seductive powers are augmented by the magnificent mansion she calls home. Here, in the long shadows cast by the Redwood Forest, Marchent introduces Reuben to her world of art and literature, genealogy and inheritance. For she and her two brothers appear to be the last of the long, Nideck line now that her uncle, Felix, has gone missing.

During Reuben's stay at the house, he and Marchent grow close, so much so that Marchent wills Reuben the grand house, knowing that he will be a worthy steward. But no sooner has she completed this act of generosity then she is violently murdered by her wayward brothers, an attack that nearly claims Reuben's life as well. He, however, is spared by a mysterious wolf who avenges Marchent before disappearing and leaving Reuben to recover from his terrible wounds in a San Francisco hospital where his doctors are utterly baffled by his recuperative powers. Even the wolf bite he took from the thing that spared his life is fading, just like all the blood and tissue samples the doctors take from him, vanishing before they can be studied, understood.

Recognizing that Reuben is a changed man, no longer the baby boy they trained him to be, Reuben's mother and girlfriend look on as Reuben draws away from them. Hounded by voices, by urges, he tries to hold himself together until he can resist the change no longer and he succumbs to the Manwolf, a creature of power and grace that is set to turn California on its ear and usher Reuben into a twilight world of friends and foes, power and legend, that humans will never comprehend.

The Wolf Gift is classic Anne Rice. Though it is too damning to contend that all her books are alike, it is, nonetheless, impossible to ignore the tropes here that she herself had a hand in creating. The supercilious women, the majestic mansion and the conspiracy of ancients are all present, energizing The Wolf Gift as much as they did her previous and most famous series. In this, her latest offering is unoriginal fare. Its reliance on long stretches of dialogue, its digressions into splashy passages of violence and self-absorption, and its drive towards a predictable conclusion inhibit any effort to think otherwise. However, this weakness is also the work's strength. For fans of Ms. Rice will be able to indulge in all the familiar rhythms of her literature. And in light of how well the author sells, this will do more than enough to secure the work's profitability.

Nonetheless, notwithstanding the extent to which Ms. Rice helped popularize the supernatural genre, one cannot help but sense the author's desire to wade into a literary space rocked by the Twilight phenomenon and show those who came after her exactly how it's truly done. For, in the end, The Wolf Gift is little more than a glossy, grown-up version of the many vampire/werewolf derivations that have bombarded us in the last ten to fifteen years. The work is not without merit -- its landscapes are lush, its action cinematic, its journey well-paced --, but it is impossible to read this novel and find in it anything original or noteworthy. Instead of imposing her imprimatur upon the werewolf genre, Ms. Rice has only succeeded in summoning a stayed supernatural tale and repackaging it in prettier wrapping. (3/5 Stars)

Bone Dance by Emma Bull

From The Week of July 17, 2011

Though it is rare for Urban Fantasy fiction to have aspirations beyond escapism, its ability to examine humanity's warts by providing it with a distorted mirror through which to view them bestows the genre with value and power. In its alternative, contemporary worlds where the normal rules do not apply, every conceit, every wish, every imagined nightmare, can be conjured up and, thus, picked apart, digested by readers used to accepting societal norms at face value. Ms. Bull's 1991 work, which was nominated for the Hugo award, manages, despite its flaws, to tap into the genre's escapism without forsaking a grander message, an admirable feat which saves her novel.

In a future Earth environmentally and economically devastated by war, hard-scrabble souls do their best to eke out an existence in the shadow of their authoritarian rulers. These powerful men have capitalized on the disintegration of high-tech civilization to regulate essential systems like electrical power, keeping all but the compliant in the dark. It is a simple and effective method of compelling wide-spread obedience from the subjugated. However, despite how many powerful cards one holds, occasionally, the gods throw up surprises, unanticipated events which have the power to destabilize the status quo.

One such wildcard is our protagonist, Sparrow, a bioengineered human being grown for a nefarious purpose which died with the collapse of the United States' government. Now free, he does his best to stay beneath the scrutiny of the high and mighty, occupying himself by restoring stereo equipment and conserving a collection of albums which he hopes to keep from sliding, along with the rest of civilization, into the rotting neglect of obscurity. But as hard as he has tried to escape the notice of the powerful, Sparrow becomes a wanted pawn in a dangerous game when, after waking from one of his periodic blackouts, he sets out to discover the source of what's plaguing him. In the process, he triggers a series of events which will shake the pillars of his city, threatening to hurl its rulers from their positions of abusive authority.

Ms. Bull has successfully amalgamated the hard technology of science fiction with the spirit world of fantasy to create a strange but compelling piece about the nature of humanity and the role that Fate plays in its existence. Sparrow is an artificial being, a thing into which the gods have breathed life. And it is through him that Ms. Bull explores the essence of human life: loves and friendships, motivations and aspirations. However, Sparrow is not his own man. He lives at the whimsy of the manifestation of voodoo spirits who have chosen to take a hand in Earth's temporal affairs. And so, even while Sparrow is learning what it is to be human, he is realizing that he is little more than a piece to a puzzle being assembled by the gods.

Though Ms. Bull succeeded in investing Sparrow with a rare, delicate and complex humanity, the remainder of Bone Dance's cast of misfits fail to animate. There are flashes here and there, moments in which the secondary characters flicker to life, but these moments are far too few and mostly confined to Frances, the enigmatic woman who complicates and catalyzes Sparrow's life.

There's much here to admire. The prose is witty and active, the world is dark and suitably spiritual, the villains are appropriately creepy and malevolent, but the story suffers from the same syndrome that plagued its protagonist. It is only half alive, deadened by a dizzying array of pop-culture allusions which rapidly became silly distractions from what was, otherwise, a serious examination of life in all its drivers and its fears. I can see why Bone Dance earned its nomination; there is gold here. But its flaws keep it well off a podium finish. (3/5 Stars)

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

From The Week of December 12, 2010

Superficially, Practical Magic is a fun read about coming-of-age witches and the burdens of living with powers they barely understand and do not want to accept, but there's a depth here, a philosophical gravitas, that gives Ms. Hoffman's book unexpected punch. This is, at root, a tale about the choices we make: to reject what we know to be true, to hurt the ones we love, to flee from situations we do not have the courage to face, and to take for granted the loyalty and kindness of good people.

Sally and Gillian are sisters who, after a disastrous fire that claims the lives of their parents, are raised by their two eccentric aunts whose witchy powers, though never overt, are present throughout the novel. Though the freedom they are provided by their hands-off aunts seems ideal for rule-allergic teenagers, the sisters are socially tarred by a community that wants nothing to do with the Owens family or its creepy house. The sisters characteristically react in opposite ways to this rejection. Gillian rebels and Sally sinks inside herself, but both eventually flee the Owens home. Gillian jets to parts unknown, leaving in her wake a string of shattered marriages and broken promises as she tries to outrun her feelings. Sally, meanwhile, settles in New England, not far from the aunts, and raises the next Owens duo, her own two daughters who are just as dissimilar from one another as Sally is from Gillian. Persevering in the face of heartache, Sally endures until, one day, Gillian shows up on her doorstep with trouble in the trunk of her car and a detective hot on her heels, forcing Sally to decide if sisterly love should trump doing the right thing.

There's so much here. Ms. Hoffman engages us in a discussion that ranges from loyalty versus truth to a debate on the good life, pausing at points along the way to ruminate on the sibling dyad and the ways in which it forces us into a kind of polarization of personality. The denial of truth to oneself even pops up now and again to haunt the multiple generations of the cursed Owens girls. This is a busy piece of engaging fiction that, somehow, manages to be totally glossed in easy and affable charm. To the extent that it's possible to write a book that is both light-hearted and deep, Ms. Hoffman has nailed the thing with admirable potency. (3/5 Stars)

Black Blade Blues by J. A. Pitts

From The Week of December 05, 2010

I'm often guilty of demanding too much from my literature. Not every story can be original, inventive and entertaining. Sometimes, a story is what it is and it's down to me to change my expectations; after all, demanding more than what a story has to offer is the quickest way to ruin its appeal. And look at Harry Potter. Some stories are just great at what they do. Black Blade Blues is exactly this sort of tale. It's balky, uneven and longwinded, yet, it knows what it is, fun and playful. So long as it is read this way, its inventive virtues will outweigh its hackneyed sins.

When we meet Sarah, our protagonist, she is a struggling blacksmith, living paycheck-to-paycheck in Seattle, Washington. She makes rent by working parttime as a crewmember on a local movie shoot which, being that it's a film about dragons and damsels, requires the presence of sword props which have a nasty tendency to break when flung about by oafish actors. Volunteering to mend the latest broken blade, Sarah re-forges the sword at her boss' workshop, not realizing that the blade she is working with is ancient, powerful and the product of Norse mythology. When wielded by a worthy hand, it is an object of strength and influence. And so it comes as something of a shock to Sarah when the sword decides she is its proper owner. Unsettled by this revelation, Sarah sticks stubbornly to skepticism despite her girlfriend's encouragement to embrace her destiny. But when trolls and dragons start appearing, determined to rest the sword from her through bribes or brute force, her belief in a rational, agnostic universe collapses in the face of the dark truth, that she has a destiny and that only through embracing that destiny can she attack the evil confronting her.

This first effort in a proposed series is plagued with problems. The prose is choppy, the celebration of SCA culture is geeky, and the story veers, at times, off on some truly unnecessary tangents, but its strengths earn it a charm I'm having a hard time shaking. Sarah is a wonderfully flawed character who is as conflicted about her destiny as she is about her sexuality. What's more, the Norse mythology is amusing, entertaining and definitely bloodthirsty, providing Sarah with opportunities to be incredulous, fearful, and heroic. And so the maturation of a confused girl into a kind of hero pleases more than the cartoonish villains annoy. Black Blade Blues is good at what it is, entertainment from which much oughtn't be asked. It's at its worst in the moments it tries and fails to be more. (3/5 Stars)

PS: It's very possible that I was simply charmed by the protagonist's struggle and, consequently, lost any capacity for objectivity. If so, feel free to scorch me.

Vampires by John Steakley

From The Week of August 08, 2010

Armor may not be the best piece of science fiction around, but at least that effort from Mr. Steakley is worth the paper its printed on. Vampires, the other of Steakley's famous works, is a repugnant accumulation of violence and despair that, for me, has no redeeming value.

The inspiration for the John Carpenter film of the same name, this tour de ugliness plunges the reader into a world darkened by vicious vampires which have swept across the world. Standing against the supernatural tide is Vampire INC., an Catholic-funded organization of mercenary cells which can be hired by local communities to exterminate the dangerous leeches. It's a decent premise for a vampire novel, perhaps even for a film, but Mr. Steakley's utter inability to infuse a shred of redeeming virtue in any of his characters dooms the tale. Which is well enough given that Vampires barely has a plot, unless one defines plot as overwrought dialogue squeezed between episodes of slaughter and nihilism.

The vampire as a concept, as a creature, is a wonderful way to explore the dark side of human nature. It is the manifestation of a truth that often rides just beneath the surface of human interaction, that humans feed off of one another on a daily basis, that some of use and exploit our fellows, while others give and heal. Mr. Steakley decides to ignore any notion of nuance, instead creating a paean to blood and death which gives the genre a bad name. (1/5 Stars)

Dead Witch Walking: The Hollows 01 by Kim Harrison

From The Week of August 16, 2009

As of this writing, there have been five further instalments in the Hallows series. If they are anything like their progenitor, then they will be pleasing, tantalizing and ultimately fluffy affairs suitable for consumption at beaches and in waiting rooms. Dead Witch Walking takes place in an alternate-universe Cincinnati in which the barriers between earth and its Heaven and Hell have weakened to the extent that magic and the creatures who weave it openly intermingle with the human population. Rachel Morgan, our protagonist, is something of a government enforcer of the rules of magic. And like almost every heroine in detective-flavored fiction, she is charming, smart, overwrought and ultimately finds herself way in over her head. Fun but it will never be more. Ivy, Rachel's vampire friend, is ten times as cool as the main character and that doesn't bode well for the books to come which will inevitably feature Rachel over her supporting cast. (3/5 Stars)

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

From The Week of August 16, 2009

These days, vampire novels are a dime-a-dozen and for a good reason. The vampire is a powerful force within our culture, the representation of the fear of being different, the fear of what goes bump in the night, the fear of absolute dependence on another human being. Unfortunately, this effort, the first in Ms. Harris' Southern Vampire series, is not one of the more inspired instalments in this genre. True Blood, the HBO drama based upon Dead Until Dark and the novels it spawned, is a considerable improvement upon the work that gave it unlife. (2/5 Stars)