Divided- Kingdom by Rupert Thomson

From The Week of August 01, 2010

Social critique in literature is a difficult line to walk. Be too blunt with the message and it offends the reader and consumes the narrative; be too subtle with the message and risk not having it heard at all. Unfortunately for Mr. Thomson, he sides with the jackhammer, repeatedly bludgeoning the reader about the head with his clumsy metaphor for social engineering and racial segregation.

In a dystopian England of the near future, the government of the day has responded to mounting social unrest by re-apportioning the realm into four major divisions, red, yellow, green, and blue. Each division corresponds with one of the four Hippocratic humors: melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic. Believing that each human being has a dominant humor, the government forces each English citizen to take a test which predicts their humor, or disposition. The results of the test cause the citizen in question to be relocated to one of the four English zones where only members of their dominant humor live. Through this system of segregation, the government hopes to eliminate conflict from society. After all, if everyone in a given zone has roughly the same disposition, harmony within a given zone will be achieved. And if these zones are only allowed to interact on the most peripheral levels, then societal harmony will follow. This redistribution tears families apart and permanently re-orders society into something new, something no one has experience with, least of all poor Thomas Parry, our protagonist, who is ripped from his mother, sent to a school for testing, and then ordered into the Sanguine zone where he grows up to become a government official. Attending a diplomatic function at which all members from all four humors are present, Parry has a hallucinatory experience at a club in town, an experience which inspires him to break the law by sneaking into each of the four zones and experiencing, for himself, what life is really like in places from which only propaganda now flows.

I shouldn't be so critical of Mr. Thomson's work; after all, he is, in his heavy-handed way, attempting to say something. That's a lot more than can be said of most fiction which seeks only to entertain without edifying. But the attempt is just so patently graceless and ridiculous that I could not suspend my disbelief. A re-structuring of society on this scale would do enormous economic harm to a country. That would not solve social unrest; it would exacerbate it. The notion that a country with, what, 150,000 soldiers, could succeed in ripping the children from the arms of 20,000,000 parents defies logic. Mr. Thomson is right to point out that some governments have foolishly championed flawed notions before. Social Darwinism anyone? But at least those ideas were based on logical prejudice. This just seems to be an excuse for a particularly elaborate acid trip. Just not good enough. (2/5 Stars)

Blood River by Tim Butcher

From The Week of August 01, 2010

There is simply no way to measure the toll in human suffering exacted by imperialism. Put your finger on a map of the world; chances are, it will land near or on a country that has been convulsed by colonial rule, either in the giving or the receiving. It's taken centuries for Latin America to recover from Spanish rule, while Asia, though economically better off, isn't doing much better coming out from under the British. But of all the continents to have been plagued by this most rapacious of monarchical externalities, Africa has suffered the most. Perhaps it was that they had no history of a civil society to fall back on when colonialism finally ran its course. Perhaps the crimes of the Germans and the Dutch, the British and the Belgian, were simply too grievous to return from. No matter the cause, much of Africa's torment is directly attributable to European influence and nowhere is this more true than the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mr. Butcher, a British journalist, something of an insane adventurer, took it upon himself to re-trace the path of Henry Morton Stanley's trans-African journey. Though much of the distance is traveled by boat on the Congo river, the gruelling overland trek Mr. Butcher endures is both harrowing and astonishing, as he contends with unreliable guides, dangerous mercenaries, monstrous insects and killer viruses to complete a most remarkable odyssey. Why remarkable? Despite the passage of some 140 years, it was barely any easier for Mr. Butcher to complete the mission than it was for his predecessor, Stanley. A hundred and fourty years, in which the Western world went from horses to airplanes, from wagons to Ferraris and, here, nothing has changed. Mr. Butcher describes in heartbreaking detail how much of the environment Stanley would recognize. In fact, in many ways, it is in even greater disrepair now than it was a century ago, as the more modern conveniences of railroad tracks have succumbed to the oblivion of disuse. Along the way, Mr. Butcher describes the people he encounters, inspiring and sinister, while acting as tour guide for the reader uneducated in the area's history. The scars left by the Belgian overlords lingers on in one of the most lawless places left on Earth.

Mr. Butcher's portrait of a failed nation is moving and disturbing. Though he lacks Megan Stack's lyricism, the raw emotion is similar as he tests the limits of his mental and physical endurance in a place antithetical to human civilization. This is a monument to anti-imperialism, a 350 page attack on the price of interfering in another society's affairs. Who knows what Africa might have been without Western arrogance. We'll never know for now it is the continent of the gun. And we well know how much damage the uneducated can do with that most devastating of human inventions. (4/5 Stars)

Vienna 1814 by David King

From The Week of August 01, 2010

Mr. King's chronicle of the Congress of Vienna, a meeting of royal minds to re-draw the borders of a post-Napoleon Europe, is easily in my top five reads of 2010. He seems as captivated by the pomp of the event as he is by its politics, an even-handed interest which spices the dryness of the history here with the proper dose of juicy scandal.

Ravaged by the ruinous Napoleonic Wars and determined to forge some kind of coherent peace out of two decades of instability, the leading monarchs of Europe, and or their representatives, traveled to Vienna in 1814 to negotiate an understanding that would allow an exhausted continent to catch its breath. What was intended to be a few weeks of talks, however, ballooned into nine months of sometimes violent arguments in which national borders were changed, whole countries were acceded to various empires and the very future of France was decided. But while the agreements that would keep Europe peaceful for the next 50 years were being hammered out in private, Vienna was having a ball, actually, hundreds of them. Europe's leading lights had attracted some of the continent's best entertainment. Each night, performances were staged, some of which were guaranteed to have royal attendance. And amongst all this frivolity, serious romances were carried out, some of which affected the men negotiating the futures of entire populations.

Though the Congress itself is interesting, the men who attended the negotiations are the stars of Mr. King's tale. From the diplomats like brilliant Talleyrand and overwhelmed Metternich, to the rulers like Czar Alexander and King Frederick, the rivalries and disagreements and pettinesses and indulgences are wonderful and scandalous, leaving little doubt as to why the Congress took so long to conclude.

This was, for many decades, the most pivotal event in recent European history. Its decisions not only changed the fates of nations, it euthanized the French Revolution and, across Europe, re-asserted the dominance of monarchical rule for half a century to come. Mr. King gives us a seat at that long ago table, a seat with a clear line of sight of all the participants and all their dirty deeds. We just may want to disinfect the seat first before we sit down and listen. Who knows where it has been, or what its occupants have been up to. (4/5 Stars)

A Country Of Vast Designs by Robert W. Merry

From The Week of August 01, 2010

The United States, for all its virtues, has had a history troubled by dark episodes. There certainly wasn't much glory to be spread around during the massacre of the Indians native to the continent. And for all its fetishizing, the Civil War was a conflict between the interests of powerful elites who cared about money far more than they cared about justice. But for all that there are periods in which all countries wish that they had been better, there are times when corruption is so systemic, when those with whom one does business are so universally dirty, that a dark outcome is inevitable. James K. Polk, the president who essentially delivered unto the United States the whole of the Southwest, was a product of this corrupted environment. Mr. Merry, a historian, encapsulates the Polk presidency, its wars, its policies and its times. And in doing so, he captures a man who did more to shape modern America than many who have followed him.

From a gruesome operation he endured as a child, to the awesome challenges he faced as President, life never seemed to come easy to James Polk. Born into the slaveholding South to relatively prosperous parents, a sharp mind and his keen ambition carried him to the White House in 1844, only three administrations prior to Abraham Lincoln's. Mr. Merry's steady hand paints a portrait of a pragmatic president who, charged by a belief in the uniqueness of America, was eager to secure his nation's prosperity both economically and militarily. Though Mr. Merry touches on some of his fiscal policies, much of this work is dominated by Polk's maneuverings which provoked a war with Mexico, a war that, at a cost of considerable lives, proved to be decisive for America. After all the bloodshed, the northern victors annexed from Mexico and Spain territory from Texas to California, more or less defining the modern boundaries of the country. But as much as we learn about Polk's machinations to establish his vision of an American future, we also learn a great deal about the man himself. For he was an accidental president, a clever politician who capitalized on the slim window of his opportunity to imprint upon his nation his dream for the future. In this way, though we can find his maneuverings contemptable by today's standards, he was admirably driven to succeed in a world that never paid him the heed he probably deserved.

Though Mr. Merry's work here is on the dry side of the historical divide between factual and entertaining, there's no shortage of earth-shaking events to cover. He does spend the majority of his time chronicling Polk, but frequent detours into the minds of Polk's contemporary Mexican adversaries are sobering and edifying. For while one may be quick to criticize Polk for his expantionist policies, Mexico of the 1840s was hardly stable or virtuous. And it is in this way that we come to understand the extent to which this most dogged of American presidents was the right man for a dark moment. We may lament the dangerous precedent he set in putting the aims of his nation above the rights and freedoms of his enemies, but there's no question that he did a great deal to set the United States on a course for wealth and destiny. Mr. Merry tells it well. (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)

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

From The Week of July 25, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

From The Week of July 25, 2010

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

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

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

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