A thoughtful glimpse of civilization's fall in The Last Policeman

From The Week of March 31st, 2014

Civilization is so pervasive, so consequential, that it's all-but impossible to imagine our lives without it. It has sparked ideas and ignited industrialization, enshrined the rule of law and elevated the power of the people, but it has also virtually blinded us to the truth, that it has bound us up in its conformist chains. This is a good bargain. After all, whatever we lose by way of personal freedom we more than gain back in enlightenment and wealth. This is indisputable. But just what have we surrendered? Is the absence of civilization truly so destructive? Would a world predicated on personal freedom necessarily be anarchic? Philosophers and anthropologists have been asking themselves these questions for generations, but Mr. Winter's has run the experiment. And though the destination may not be revelatory, the journey certainly is entertaining.

It is virtually certain that, in six months, everyone on Earth will be dead. This is the truth that confronts Harry Palace one unforgettable morning when he wakes to the news that a planet-killing asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. A policeman in a quiet, new-England town, one would expect that he, like every other living human, would be tempted to throw off the boring mundanity of daily existence, either by revelling in the freedom of these final days, or by ending it all on their own terms. But Harry Palace is not like the thieves and the opportunists, the professors and the pilots, who have forsaken their lives and their posts for a final, explosive experience. Harry palace holds the thin blue line against the darkness, righteously holding up the law in a world going to pieces.

The only problem is that it's almost impossible to be a policeman in the endtimes. Cell service is spotty, hospitals are barely staffed and the police force's investigative powers are being shut down. After all, what's the point in solving any sort of crime when there's so little time left? But to harry palace, truth is truth, right is right, and an oath is an oath. And even if it kills him, he's going to hold that line until the bitter end, as best he knows how.

An engaging journey through a tragicomic landscape, The Last Policeman and its successor Countdown City are pieces of imaginative near-future fiction. Ben Winters, though far from the first to attempt to conceive of a world careening through its last days, nonetheless manages to lay it out with style, with passion and with originality. His post-Announcement New England is vividly and organically drawn, a place where, though law and order is practically maintained, the soul has been ripped out of the community. There remains a societal superstructure within which to operate, but families are deteriorating, services are decaying and people are wandering off to please themselves before the end. Consequently, the author's world is not one of instant and gratuitous violence, but one in which the social, economic and civil webs that bind us all together are being sundered thread by thread, widening existing holes through which yet more vulnerable people slip into oblivion.

More than its rich environment, though, The Last Policeman's protagonist is also relatively rare. In a world slowly fraying at its seams, harry Palace is a humble, even geeky, rock of stability. He's a square, a man who does good because he has never thought to do anything else. While many of his fellows escape their obligations, he stays to do the job he's always wanted to do, an unthanked, unwanted, and unacknowledged pillar of civilization that someone will eventually break. In this, Palace does the series wonderful service as both an object of amusement and admiration. The former comes as the reader snickers at his naivety and his earnest doggedness; the later arrives when we come to understand just how much he must sacrifice in order to stand up in the face of a tide that even he seems to know will wash him away.

The first two volumes of the Last Policeman are by no means perfect. The author's mysteries are as threadbare as they are insignificant. Thus, as Harry labors to solve them, we are left to snicker and scorn him for either his thick-headedness or his gullibility. And given that Harry was already a square, having these attributes emphasized in this way is less than flattering. Moreover, we're often left with the impression that Harry's humanity only exists as a means by which to highlight its absence in everyone else around him. Which draws scrutiny to Harry's spotless character that it cannot withstand. Howevermuch the works may be flawed, the extent to which Mr. Winter's has avoided the cliches of apocalyptic fiction, and attempted instead to ask intriguing questions about what the world would realistically look like if all our deaths were as certain as sunrise, grants his work imagination and depth that easily overcomes its shortcomings.

An interesting idea that is neither boring or derivative... (3/5 Stars)

A thrilling demolition of tropes and expectations in The Demon Cycle

From The Week of December 30th, 2013

There are many ways to measure a man. We can judge him on how he treats his fellows, on how he acts when there's no one around to watch him, even on how he represents himself to those who know no better. But these observations can only tell us so much, and mostly about the public and private faces of someone shaped by a million different experiences and interactions. Hence, it's popular to suggest putting him to the most extreme test, of stripping away every advantage to see what he is like when the crucible is upon him. But even cowards can find courage when there's nothing left to lose. No, the best way to measure a man is to give him the world, to grant him godlike powers to change the destinies of himself and everyone he knows. Only then, when there are no societal checks left to confine him, can you truly know him. And this truth is vividly rendered in Peter V. Brett's fascinating and often exhilarating series.

In a devastated world, ground to dust by an unstoppable threat, life is as difficult as it is short. Civilization has been reduced to isolated hollows, semi-autonomous hamlets notionally under the control of various neighboring duchies. But while these regional authorities provide a threadbare framework of centralized control, this is, at best, lip service to a humanity traumatized into servitude by immortal demons which, every night, rise up from the earth's core, yearning for destruction and sustenance. Manifesting from stone and wood, from wind and fire, these seemingly unvanquishable foes reek havoc upon society, preventing it from advancing upon the medieval creeds and conditions that define it.

However, despite the insurmountable obstacles these demons represent, not all hope is lost. For these creatures are susceptible to sunlight, which dispatches them back to the hell they came from, and to the Wards, a hieroglyphic language that, when properly composed, has the power to not only repel the demons with magic, but to harm them as well. Only, the secrets of this language have been long lost, forcing the surviving humans to huddle in their houses, behind the few wards they remember, and pray for a dawn that never comes swiftly enough.

This gruesome stalemate, however, is shattered some 300 years after the rising of the demons when an ancient city is re-discovered by a wandering youth, searching, earnestly and hopelessly, for answers to the demon threat. At great peril, the young man liberates not only warded weapons from this sacred place, but also knowledge of long-lost wards that may well allow humanity to hold its own against the demons. However, this city is not of his heritage and the fight that ensues, over possession of its relics, and the mantle of its stewardship, may well shatter humanity forever and see a permanent night ascend from the Core to claim the world.

A thrilling ride through a broken world yearning for any sign of hope, the first three volumes of the Demon Cycle is, on balance, excellent fantasy fiction. Drawing on the venerable traditions of the epics that have shaped the genre, Mr. Brett begins with a premise that that has underpinned thousands of tales like it, the young man rising out of obscurity to defeat the indefatigable dark power. And yet, instead of relying upon the tropes typical of such tales, he exploits them, establishing the reader's expectations only to shatter them with creative developments of character and plot that charge what should be a stale adventure with energy and vigor. This is no mean feat; it is far easier to travel the well-worn path than it is to strike out on one's own. Thus, Mr. Brett should be celebrated for the exhilarating surprises his subversiveness generates.

While The Demon Cycle, thus far, has a cast of engaging, if overexposed characters, and a familiar world so reminiscent of more epics than I can name, it is pleasingly original in its willingness to draw in the symbols and the tropes of different genres to forge something new. Elements of horror, romance and dystopianism are all present here, lending the work the doom of a post-apocalyptic novel. And yet, these various threads are united by the work's protagonists, all of whom stubbornly put a shoulder into the plot until it is flying along, the work of potent, if opposing, wills. What's more, the author has drawn on the tropes of the video-game world to provide an even more familiar structure to the plot which sees heroes and villains alike methodically ascending from powerless obscurity to triumph and wonder.

The Demon Cycle ought to be a Frankenstein, a monster built from the stolen parts of unconnected creatures and, certainly, it has its bad moments. The genre-bending sees Mr. Brett discordantly inject episodes of extreme violence and physical and sexual abuse into a tale that, at times, feels as emotionally harmless as the Lord of The Rings. What's more, it's borrowing of things familiar to us leads it down a road to cultural insensitivity. For Mr. Brett has uncritically appropriated swaths of Bedouin and Arabic society to stand in for his world's desert people, exposing his readers to a thoroughly westernized view of cultures more complex than he often gives them credit for. These are flaws that drag on the three published novels, burdening them with unnecessary baggage. And yet, given that the series' strength is its capacity to subvert, perhaps these too are simply expectations being set up to be knocked down. We can hope.

This is a superb and unexpected delight that resists being set down. An adventure of the most darkly engaging kind... (4/5 Stars)

A sprawling and successful SciFi epic in Hamilton's The Void Trilogy

From The Week of November 10th, 2013

From our actions to our futures, the right to choose is one of humanity's most coveted freedoms, one that countless souls have died to ensure and to preserve. This is as undeniable as it is peculiar. After all, humans, down through the bloody centuries of their history, have spent far more time bound by coercive bondage, political, economic, social, than they have spent free to act as they see fit. Kings and chieftains, sea captains and factory owners, popes and martyrs... They have all used their power and their authority to claim our fealty. And yet, perhaps this is the very reason why the freedom to choose is so prized. For when it is so rare to be afforded with the opportunity to choose one's destiny, regardless of the consequences, then it is savored like the finest wine. But what if we were all afforded this uncoerced right? What if we could act as we pleased no matter the costs to the others around us? Would it still seem wise to hail such a right? Peter F. Hamilton speculates in his engrossing epic.

It is the middle of the fourth millennia and humanity wants for nothing. In the 1,500 years since the creation of the first computer, we have traveled to other stars, encountered alien races both friendly and formidable, and discovered wondrous technologies that have, for most, banished the very notion of suffering. Powerful artificial intelligences ensure a safe and lawful Commonwealth of worlds, most of which have access to science and immortality, art and faith. After all, there is room for any sort of life in a civilization that has done away with the scarcity imposed by finite resources and limited power. In a universe where matter and energy are equally malleable, there is little one needs be denied.

And yet, encroaching upon this utopia is the strangest of threats. The void has persisted for nearly a million years, an incomprehensible region of distorted space within the galaxy in which the physical laws as we know them seem not to apply, in which the power of the mind appears to be superior to that of the physics of spacetime. This might be nothing more than an object of curiosity were it not for the fact that the Void occasionally undergoes expansion fazes, moments of explosive violence that consume the stars and planets in its path. Despite the best efforts of the galaxy's most powerful minds and weapons, the Void has proven to be impervious and indestructible which is why entire star systems have had to be evacuated ahead of its expansion in order not to condemn the lives of countless souls to its voraciousness.

Though the Void's purpose is unknown, many factions within human civilization believe they hold the answers. The most popular of these is the Living Dream, a vaguely Christian organization that believes the Void is a kind of heaven into which they can pass. But those who've studied the Void argue that passing into it helps to trigger its expansion fazes which is why they attempt to halt the pilgrimages to the Void. And yet, these imposts only seem to encourage the dreamers to try harder to achieve their aims, no matter the cost to the universe the Void is threatening to devour.

A series as inventive as it is expansive, The Void Trilogy is epic science fiction, a 700,000-word odyssey through worlds of science and death, politics and faith, yearning and fanaticism. Mr. Hamilton, who is no stranger to thinking big with his fiction, has built here on an existing universe, introducing into it an existential threat that his protagonists fear and his antagonists hunger for. Their clashes prove to be as memorable as they are violent, leaving no doubt that humanity's thirst for destruction, its willingness to use force, has not been softened by immortality.

In its technology and its politics, The Void Trilogy is deeply reminiscent of Iain Banks' famous Culture Series, a collection of works that tried to conceptualize a utopian future for humanity unburdened by the chains of scarcity, one in which everyone would be free to pursue their interests thanks to the willingness of machines and artificial intelligences to do the unglamorous labors that underpin civilization. Certainly, some of the ideas deployed here, are fanciful unto hilarity -- weapons capable of destroying planets and stars are, at times, unleashed almost gleefully --, but Mr. Hamilton manages to largely confine his flamboyant excesses, leaving the reader with an exploration of life utterly transformed from the paradigms with which we are so familiar. To step outside those prejudices, those realities, is a significant achievement in its own right. To then manifest such a utopian civilization in which we are all free to act as we choose, be who we choose, is a feat in truth.

It is a most difficult task to maintain the reader's interest over nearly 2,000 pages and for that we have Mr. Hamilton's host of characters to thank. From the silly to the serious, from the sociopathic to the egomaniacal, we are introduced to detectives and popes, martyrs and commoners, zealots and knowledge seekers, all of whom come together to form a vivid tapestry of conflict and power. And yet, these fine actors are also the epic's most troublesome element. For though most of our prime players have existed for more than a millennia, some even back to the early 21st century, none show any sign of the immense weariness that would naturally eventuate from living so many countless years. Mr. Hamilton makes virtually no attempt to lay out the social conventions that would have to arise to grapple with such unfathomable lifespans: multiple lives, multiple partners, multiple careers. In fact, one of his main characters has been a detective for more than a thousand years. Far from admirable, this seems almost perverse. This, along with a certain plasticness of minds and deeds, troubles the work.

And yet, these flaws do not ruin the epic. For like in life, it is easy to imagine darkness and degradation, to dream up the dystopias that some secret part inside all of us hungers for. It is much more difficult to create, to conceive of a world that is wholly new, and then to animate that world with vibrancy and vitality. The Void Trilogy may be far more interested in exploding stars and weaponized black holes than it is in the sociology and psychology, but it still checks all the boxes of good SciFi while being a rollicking good time. (4/5 Stars)

a darkly imaginative, entertaining epic in The Magister Trilogy

From The Week of November 4th, 2013

Excluding a few, notably greedy exceptions, we all want to believe that life should be lived in balance, harmonies that govern man and nature, man with his fellows, and man with himself. Humanity has invented entire faiths in hopes of propagating this notion, of establishing this karmic linkage at the root of our existences. After all, what better way to ensure that the excesses of the few are discouraged by the prudence of the many? There's only one problem with this belief however; it is a facade. Life, like the universe, is governed only by opportunity, its resources exploitable, its blessings random. Some god, some force, may indeed have conjured it into being, but that animating intelligence has done little to curb the disharmonies in our world that put the lie to such utopian notions as fairness and equality.

But what if the world was karmic? What if the universe was chained to balance in such a way that consequences automatically followed on from actions? What would such a world look like? C.S. Friedman imagines in her enthralling trilogy.

In a medieval world of kings and magic, sins and sacrilege, life, for all but a few, is difficult and often all-too brief. While royals wile away their years with the plots and the rivalries that define their existences, the commonborn put their shoulders to their many labors, hoping to fashion for themselves lives for which they can be proud. In the event that they succeed, they might even live long enough to pass down these hard-won advantages to their sons. After all, in such a world, a woman's place is either prone upon her back, a willing vessel for the desires of others, or stooped over a stove, in order to provide for her family.

Kamala should be no exception to this rule. Sold by her mother into a life of sexual slavery while still a child, she has known only degradation and forced service to the whims and pleasures of others. And yet, a fire burns inside her that cannot be so easily put out by such darkness. For Kamala is a witch, a relatively rare soul born with the ability to draw upon her own life's essence to perform feats of magic. From healing to the manipulation of the weather, she, like witches the world over, can win honor and acclaim with her powers, and yet, each mystic act, each re-arranging of the stuff of the world, saps her lifeforce until she is a spent shell, ready for death's cold embrace.

Of course, there is one way to circumvent this inviolate rule, to cheat death on the road to immortality, and that is to become a magister, a witch who uses the lifeforces of others instead of her own to perform her feats. Only, there has never before been a female magister, that is, until Kamala's indomitable will rewrites history. And just in time. For her world is facing an old foe so long banished that it has become nothing more than faintest myth. And if the world is to not be devoured by this darkly jewelled threat, then it will need her and more besides to face it down and restore the balance that has been upended.

Successfully building upon some of the vampiric themes explored in her Coldfire Trilogy, Ms. Friedman's The Magister Trilogy is dark fantasy at its most sublime. Not only does it lay claim to a magic system that is as exquisitely simple as it is brilliantly karmic, it cheerfully gathers up some of the genre's more lazy tropes, shapes them to its own, wicked designs and then gleefully unleashes them upon the unsuspecting reader. This boldness, this willingness to make firm choices and stick to them, to have enough respect for the laws of the world that refusing to break them for the sake of convenience is virtually taken for granted, establishes a bond of trust wit the reader that allows the work to be thoroughly enjoyed without any fear that he is being beguiled into wasting his time on some dull, derivative adventure through well-trodden lands.

More than Ms. Friedman's authenticity of form and function, though, The magister Trilogy is remarkable for its heroine. For this is no abused spirit waiting for the love of a good man to make her whole. She is a creature that burns with her own ambition, her own desire, her own lust for triumph. Others have tried their hands at featuring such anti-heroines before -- The Mistborn Trilogy perhaps coming closest --, but these creatures were ultimately meant to be seduced into reform, raised up by loving hands into a melodramatic world of love and grace. Not so Kamala whose evolution is not towards being lovable, being clean, or even being pretty, but to be strong and whole, a self-sufficient sword forged of stuff far too stern to ever be broken by the selfish desires of others.

For all her thrilling independence, though, Kamala is simultaneously the work's primary weakness. For we are never really allowed to see Kamala's painful, formative years, the events, emotional and otherwise, that scarred her. Given the nature of Kamala's abuse, it's understandable why the author chose to tread lightly here. However, without any real experience with the most scarring and transformative moments of Kamala's life, her anger is rather pale, something we are asked to take as fact instead of witnessing it first hand. Ms. Friedman's choice to leave these dark events out is prudent, but it does rather mute Kamala's emotional impact on the reader.

Certainly, The Magister Trilogy indulges in its fair share of familiar themes: the unstoppable evil, the aloof magicians, the powerful and despotic kings. But even these are given new and interesting slants that, though not as authentic as Kamala'sevolution, do well to provide her a supporting and supportive cast. This, along with one of the best magic systems in recent memory, makes this a winner any lover of fantasy would be happy to encounter. (4/5 Stars)

The Petrovitch Trilogy booms and sizzles like a Hollywood blockbuster

From The Week of April 15, 2013

Beforelong, any discussion of what constitutes a good life inevitably turns to the fundamental question of what we, as individuals, owe to the world into which we are born. We cannot choose the society that birthed us. Nor can we necessarily choose to emigrate to the society that best suits us. And so, given that we lack a full measure of agency in this area, one would expect our answer to be that we owe our world nothing, that one can only feel an obligation to something that they have freely chosen to belong to. Despite this, many of us choose to give back not only our time and money, but, in some cases, our very lives. Such a selfless act of devotion to a society can only mean that, to some of us, society is everything. This most enduring debate underpins Simon Morden's explosive, apocalyptic trilogy.

It is the third decade of the 21st century and the world has been convulsed by terrorism. An event known simply as the Armageddon, a series of nuclear suicide bombings perpetrated by zealots, destroyed much of the new century's promise, reducing many of the world's countries to radioactive wastelands and triggering a refugee crisis throughout what remained. The United States and the European Union appear to be the two remaining powers of significance. However, the former is too beset by its own religious fundamentalism and the latter is too convulsed by seeming indifference to set about restoring order to a planet in political, environmental and economic shambles.

Amidst this ruin endures Samuel Petrovitch. A refugee from radioactive Saint Petersburg, he has come to post-Armageddon London, now known as the Metrozone, to attend school at the Imperial College of London where he has distinguished himself as a brilliant thinker in the field of experimental physics. Cynical beyond his youthful years, he has been deeply scarred by a hellish adolescence that has left him with not only a faulty heart, but a heavily burdened conscience that, despite his every effort, he cannot quash. He wishes only to be left alone, to create something glorious out of the rubble, but fate has conspired to place him at the center of great events over which he has only minimal control, events that have the power to transform the world beyond something even Petrovitch's powerful mind would recognize.

Ambitiously grappling with any number of vital social issues, The Samuel Petrovitch Trilogy is a gripping thrillride through a post-nuclear Hell. Mr. Morden imagines a profoundly scarred world that has finally paid a high price for nuclear proliferation. He's then seeded this world with a fascinating array of characters, all of whom have suffered through not only Armageddon, but the socioeconomic fallout that has virtually ended the notion of local government, transferring the bulk of political power, at least in the Metrozone, into the hands of gangland figures and crime lords who possess the lethal combination of ruthlessness and manpower to make some kind of order from the chaos. We are made witness to the birth of religions, of social classes, even of new traditions, that would have been unimaginable even 20 years earlier.

Though Mr. Morden's trilogy is squarely aimed at readers seeking plots and prose drenched in adrenaline, his work here is elevated by a series of ethical questions that will transfix more thoughtful readers. The author deploys Petrovitch as a cipher for the technologies of tomorrow, a means through which his readers can interpret both the promise and the terror of what's to come. What are the potential costs to human society of widespread computer automation of infrastructure and transportation? What are the spiritual implications of creating artificial intelligences which exhibit every indication of sentience and conscience? What should we be willing to sacrifice, in the form of order, to open our borders to refugees from dying nations? These are merely a few of the numerous 21st-century debates that, yet to be widely argued, will undoubtedly define the decades to come. Mr. Morden executes them with skill and style.

For all its thematic virtues, however, let there be no doubt that this series has its numerous troubles. The Samuel Petrovitch Trilogy is the literary equivalent to a Hollywood summer blockbuster, an explosive spectacle that, in the silence between cacophonies, seeks to say something profound. To Mr. Morden's credit, he pulls off this magic trick far more fluidly than do his siblings in cinema, but this does not alter the reality that these three works are bloated with post-apocalyptic action sequences that are both repetitive and overblown. Moreover, when it comes to metaphor, Mr. Morden has the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Petrovitch's malformed heart is meant to represent the profound selfishness that is the face he puts to the world. His search for a healthy alternative is meant to parallel his search for goodness, both internal and external. And yet, it's clear that Petrovitch already possesses a conscience and a spiritual heart, compelling Mr. Morden to pivot this metaphor to one of man becoming machine that never escapes the hopelessly theatrical.

However much this trilogy is like a fine rock band that plays too loudly just because it can, its merits ultimately overcome its flaws. This is not just a nihilistic journey through a crumbling world. This is a vision of a utopia being born out of the ashes of human error and ignorance. Executing this vision requires not just talent, but a desire to say something meaningful. That is a virtue we can all celebrate. (3/5 Stars)

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)

A beautiful, bleak tragedy slowly unfurled in Hugh Howey's Wool Series

From The Week of march 4, 2013
Our lies are always with us. For as much as we try to extricate ourselves from them, their stains linger so long as the truths sequestered by their telling remain obscured. And even though it is within our power to remove such a stain with a simple, straightforward confession, most of us cannot bring ourselves to do so. For with the passing of every moment, a lie grows in power, accreting in proportion with the damage it would cause when revealed. For most of us, this is a relatively small problem confined to relationships which operate almost entirely on trust, trust that is undermined with every falsehood. But what about the big lies? The lies institutions sell, the lies societies nurture, the lies governments spin? What if a lie is so monstrously large that the confessing of it would break the world? Mr. Howey uses this question to wonderful advantage in his engrossing and creepy series.

Centuries from now, Earth has become a wasteland. Soaring cities and resplendent nature have been rubbled and ruined by human hubris. What form this hubris may have taken has been obscured by time, by the passing of generations absorbed by the rhythms of life. And yet, the evidence of that ancient disaster remains, the images of gray skies, vicious winds and dead earth beamed into the silo that now harbors what is left of humanity. Outside, the world is cold and decayed, but within the Silo it is warm and vibrant, 144 floors of orderly existence shafting deep into the earth where oil and nitrogen, the essentials of life, can be mined and used to empower civilization.

From all outward appearances, the Silo is quite a harmonious place. Modelled on a small American town, it deploys a hierarchical power structure to safeguard the survival of the species. Its many trades, from engineering to portering, are clearly delineated, their talent pools refreshed by a well-organized cast system that, though not completely rigid, ensures that vocational knowledge is largely past down through families instead of being lost in the chaos of self-determination. This eliminates the need for universities. For aside from some basic knowledge, children grow up absorbing what they need to know from their friends, their family and their environment, a perfect incubator for the generation to follow.

This harmony, however, is a facade. For within the Silo, knowledge is tightly controlled, the rebellious sins of the past erased by not just censorship, but the pact each individual makes with the Silo's collective, that he or she will obey the laws and will avoid heretical questions about the past and the outside, the contemplation of which can lead to disaster. The Silo is largely successful in maintaining this pact, but when the wife of its sheriff is broken by the discovery of one of the Silo's most terrible secrets, the Silo's lawman initiates an investigation, the consequences of which will rock the Silo for generations to come.

One of the first major, sustainable successes in self-publishing, The Wool Series is a riveting collection of short stories which re-imagines the post-apocalyptic drama for the 21st century. Harnessing the most terrifying elements of horror, mystery and science fiction, Mr. Howey manages to infest the reader with a powerful sense of creeping wrongness, of gnawing claustrophobia, of crushing bleakness which, though potent, is rarely off-putting. This is a serious alchemical achievement. For activating such emotions can, when overcooked, provoke in the reader an antipathy that, when conjured, is all-but impossible to suppress. That Mr. Howey has found the proper balance here exemplifies his skill.

Though the series adopts a fairly novel approach to an old premise, the notion of a civilization in a bottle, this is not its only virtue. Mr. Howey has imbued his characters with winning personalities that rarely stray into two-dimensional caricatures. What at first appears to be overly simplistic blacks and whites eventually evolve into far more complicated grays whose ambiguities please far more than they irritate. Moreover, the author's sense of cause and effect is delightful. For its clear that the entire plot of the series is kicked off by a single, subtle action, one that creates a subsequent chain that ignites wholesale changes in the author's universe. Instead of fighting this, or even modulating it, Mr. Howey appears only to encourage the eruption, to follow eagerly where the falling dominos lead him. This is a refreshing development for a fairly stale genre.

For all its virtues, though, The Wool Series is not without its flaws. Some of its ex-post justifications for how the world came to be so twisted are decidedly threadbare, revealing gaps in logic that are troublesome. Moreover, after the first five stories, which grapple with the lives of those within the Silo, the series branches out to try to animate the days leading up to the disaster that created this dark world. This fails both theatrically and as a character study. For not only are the near-future characters decidedly less interesting than those who populate the Silo, the premature revelation of how the Silo came to be robs us of one of the series' most successful features, that the reader knew only as much as the Silo's characters knew, a reality which allowed us to unknot the mystery of its secrets and its origins alongside them. Granting us this omnipotent perspective severs this intimate connection with the Silo. It's clear that the author did this with an eye towards converging past and present at the climax of his tale, but the price he has paid for this is, to my mind, too high.

This is excellent, cross-disciplinary science fiction with the power to keep one up at night with dreams of a dark, authoritarian future. It would be worthy of your hard-earned even if each tale wasn't priced at $1, a supreme value that lights the way to the future of publishing, a little coin from a mass audience. One of the most inventive reads in some time... (4/5 Stars)

A sweeping epic brought to a fitting end in A Memory of Light

From The Week of January 7, 2013
While it can, at times, descend into a hell of pompous verbosity, a composition riddled with more splash than substance, few forms of human expression rival the epic. For its numerous volumes, its thousands of pages and its countless words are, for the reader, not a flowery attempt to maximize profits by stretching to its limits a good idea but a singular commitment to the author's literary fantasy, an act of faith that is rewarded with membership to an exclusive club of fans, who like Brahmin, know the secret words and gestures, the symbols and the poetry, of something special, of something unique. The epic creates a world of ideas and textures, heros and villains, made three-dimensional by not only the room to be more fully developed, but by the passage of time outside the epic, years in which the reader matures in both his understanding of the world and of its universal themes. This simply cannot be replicated by a single, passing volume. For nothing that can be consumed in a day can evoke the same intensity of emotion, much less kindle, with its conclusion, the same sense of loss. It is a parallel world and few have been woven with such vividness and flair than The Wheel of Time which is brought to a fittingly apocalyptic end with The Memory of Light.

In a world of magic and sword, of beauty and taint, the Last Battle has come, heralding the end of everything. For what was set in motion thousands of years earlier, with the opening of the Dark One's prison by ambitious men and women made foolish by an unquenchable lust for power, has now culminated in a climactic war between the beleaguered and vulnerable forces of the Light and the ascendent and merciless powers of shadow which clash to determine the future of the world.

The Light, helmed by the Dragon Reborn, the reincarnated general who failed in his attempt to mitigate the damage of his former friends who bored into the Dark One's prison, seeks to preserve what they know, to fight for the queens and customs, the banners and the lands, that comprise their battered world. The shadow, meanwhile, guided by Shai'tan, the manifestation of annihilation, seeks to end it, to unweave the Pattern of life and either replace it with nothingness, as some would have it, or, alternatively, with a world of manifest darkness, a world of fealty and slavery, of suffering and ownership.

The Light cannot win. For they failed in their only other attempt to stanch the shadow, an attempt which broke the world, devolving it from a jewel of technology and freedom into a morass of ignorance and loss. And if the Dark One could not be stopped by the skill and the knowledge of a civilization at its peak, then how can a ragtag collection of medieval farmers and knights, of self-important mystics and magicians, do better? And yet they must. For should they fail, everything that they ever were, centuries of lives and memories, of love and labor, will be lost, leaving beauty to be consumed by the void.

Begun with 1990's The Eye of The World, The Wheel of Time spanned 23 years, 14 volumes and two authors. At times, it was devoured by its own self-importance, descending into an obsessive attention to detail that caused its conceiver, James Rigney, writing under the pseudonym Robert Jordan, to dramatically expand the series from its six initial volumes, a choice which both haunted the epic and necessitated, with Mr. Rigney's death, its conclusion by another, younger hand. It was a series characterized by shrewish women, overwrought mysticism and countless plot digressions. And yet, for all its flaws, it was a work of astonishing imagination, of unbelievable complexity and of unrivaled escapism that encouraged a generation of readers to reconceive of everything from love to war, of heroism to cowardice. In this, it was a remarkable success.

For all its virtues, though, The Wheel of Time would have been little more than an exercise in torment had its concluding volume failed to steer this ponderous ship into a rewarding and safe harbor. Fortunately, then, A Memory of Light is a worthy end to a worthy epic. For after the series spent thirteen volumes promising a war to end all wars, A Memory of Light delivers with 992 pages of cacophonous conflict that, at times, seems to turn the entire world to rubble. The destinies of all of its primary characters are finally fulfilled and in a manner which pleases far more than it frustrates. This is no minor achievement from a series that promised so much for so long.

For all its heros and its battles, its magic and its apocalyptica, The Wheel of Time will be remembered for its mythos which lurches to a surprising conclusion in this final novel. This was an epic about balanced polarities, light and dark, purity and taint, women and men, implying strongly that the world is only balanced through a cosmic game of tug of war executed by two equally potent opponents. This seems like an overly simplistic conception of a world which appears to be much more about spectrums than polarities. Moreover, the series elevated steadfastness of character to the foremost rank of virtue while largely rejecting the notion that wisdom comes through knowledge. It contends, rather, that knowledge leads to power and that power breeds the kind of pride and selfishness that can break the world. This sad tale has surely occurred and yet the inverse is also true. Simple folk have produced just as many narrowminded, ignorant souls as the educated have produced powermongers. It is a matter of temperament not lifestyle, of personality not temptation. Nonetheless, that the series dares to ask these questions, and that it answers them with a fully formed opinion, puts it well above the fray.

This is, for most of those who read it, a memorable series that has, here, been brought to a close with a momentous coda that won't be soon forgotten. A wonderful series that, now that it is over, can proceed to have its annoyances and missteps polished by the fondness of time's passing. (4/5 Stars)

The Scar by Sergey & Marina Dyachenko

From The Week of October 22, 2012

Courage is a fascinating virtue. Endowed with inspirational powers of leadership, its possessors are inoculated against the debilitating effects of fear. Able to think clearly, these brave souls are free to rise above the fray and lead by example, secure in the knowledge that self-confidence is the only requirement for success. This is particularly true of hierarchical humans, most of whom belong to cultures that praise conformity while worshipping those rare outliers who spring up to be kings and visionaries, captains and CEOs. But if these are the destinies of the courageous, what fates await those who lack courage? How are they viewed? And is this judgement fair when the fearful may have other virtuous qualities? Sergey and marina Dyachenko muse upon these very questions in their pleasingly atypical novel.

In a realm of mages and soldiers shuddering through its own Enlightenment, a movement that has brought universities and learning to a formerly medieval world of swords and violence, the old ways of honor and privilege still hold sway. This proves particularly true for Egert Soll, the arrogant and cruel eldest son of a revered noble house. For he is not only blessed of background, but of sword as well, boasting one of the fastest and most skilled blades in the city, perhaps even the realm itself. Before him stretch two long and profitable careers, as a lieutenant in the guards by day and as a filanderer in the beds of married women by night. Nothing can halt his confident rise to power and mastery.

But all of this changes when Egert fatefully encounters a beautiful, young woman who spurns his cocky advances. For not only does she find him detestable, she is already in a relationship with a student at the city's university. They treasure talents of the mind, not of the arm. Unwilling to take no for an answer, Egert precipitates a duel with the young woman's lover, one in which he easily overwhelms the overmatched student. But this fun has its price. For a mage, hearing of Egert's dishonorable actions, curses him, draining away all of his courage and leaving him a broken man forced to wander the world, afraid of his own shadow and in search of elusive redemption.

Though firmly ensconced in the fantasy genre, The Scar is a sprawling novel that draws upon the fine traditions of Russian literature to elevate apiece of genre fiction into a work of meaning and elegance. Mr. and Mrs. Dyachenko command eloquent pens which slip as easily into poetry as they do prose, merging the forms to create an exciting amalgam of story and study. For this is nothing short of a consequential rumination on human nature and its capacity for cruelty and forgiveness, for arrogance and humility, for scorn and generosity. What's more, it manages to muse without being pompous, to remonstrate without being judgmental, virtues which allow the story, infused as it is with romance and apocalypse, to be enjoyable rather than overbearing.

Though The Scar is undoubtedly one of the most successful fusions of Fantasy with the higher literary traditions, it is not without its problems. It champions humanism, valuing the word above the sword, the mind over might. And yet, it calls upon its heroine to forgive, perhaps even to love, the man who slew her fiance, a contortion of character and morality that it doesn't quite pull off. The work makes a solid case for forgiveness, that little can come of holding onto ones hate and contempt, especially when earnest repentance has been made. And yet, it's one thing to forgive; it is entirely another to love ones transgressor. The gender politics here do not stand on the firmest ground.

There are no twists here, no turns of fate that will leave the reader surprised by the outcome. In fact, the novel's conclusion is predictable from the first few chapters. But it is a credit to not only its authorship but its craftsmanship that this is not a flaw. Far from it. The Dyachenkos transform Egert's predictable journey into an odyssey, an adventure of consequence and fascination. Well worth the read... (4/5 Stars)

The Bridge Of D'Arnath by Carol Berg

From The Week of September 17, 2012 Though we endeavor, throughout our lives, to exert as much control over our destinies as possible, Fate is always there, ready to spoil our well-made plans. For while we may find it within ourselves to plot our own futures, we cannot dictate broader events. these are the gestalt of other actors who, in chaotic concert, weave a tapestry of action upon which we must work. Most of us will be indifferent to this fateful intersection of individual and world; after all, most of us experience customary lives which lack the mass to change the pattern of life. and yet, those rare few who do stand at the heart of things will find themselves utterly changed by Fate's hand, a caress that will steer them far from happy lassitude and into painful turmoil. Ms. Berg illustrates in her four-part epic.

Connected by an ancient, mystical bridge that spans the unfathomable void between their two worlds, the lands of Leiran and D'Arnath should have much in common. For centuries, D'Arnathy sorcerers have mingled in medieval Leiran, restoring its sick to health and filling its land with life. but where magic comes easily to the sons and daughters of D'Arnath, it has never been found in the bloodlines of Leiran families, an absence that has encouraged suspicion within the Leiran nobility, suspicions that the realm's priesthood has galvanized into prohibition. Eventually, a ban on sorcerers is found to be insufficient. Now, nothing short of a gruesome death shall be the punishment of any mage found to beoperating within Leiran lands.

One might imagine that the D'Arnathy, superior in every imaginable way to the Leiran, would simply depart, leaving their inferior cousins to their ignorance, but an ancient war with demigods on their own world has reduced 90 percent of their homeland to rack and ruin. what was once beautiful and green is now deserted and brown, the consequence of the wielding of unimaginable power. The D'Arnathy, then, are a people in peril, a people on the brink of homelessness, a people of peace made into the children of war who may yet be wiped clear of the canvas of history.

In The Son of Avonar, the epic's opening volley, we meet Lady Serriana of Leiran, a duchess who has accepted disgrace for living in sin with a D'Arnathy healer. having found in her lover only kindness and steadfastness, her life is shattered when the truth of his identity is publicly revealed and he is put to death in a most cruel fashion. This, coupled with the death of her son by this same man, compels Serriana to reject her life and her station, to withdraw to a distant cottage and spend the rest of her days in solitude.

this reverie, however, is broken when a young man barges into her world. Deeply damaged, he seems not to know his own name, let alone possess any capacity to sensibly communicate with the woman whose life he's interrupted. despite the barriers separating them, though, Serriana comes to believe that this stranger may well come to play a key role in the consequential events to come. For the bridge that has long-connected Leiran with D'Arnath is crumbling. and its falling may well spell the end of freedom on both worlds.

In Guardians of The Keep, the epic's second volume, Serriana's life is once again skewered by fate. having been pardoned by the Leiran king for her relationship with a D'Arnathy, she has returned to Conigor, the keep of her birth, to settle the affairs of her dead brother. duke Tomas' son, however, soon acquires her full attention. for in addition to being somber and sullen, he is deeply suspicious of his aunt who he's been taught to despise. when he fatefully runs away from Conigor, Serriana endeavors to bring him home, but she and her friends are too late. Her brother's son has been welcomed into the arms of the Lords of Zhev'Na, the destructive enemies of the D'Arnathy and they are ready to make of him a god of chaos to stand with them in the ruination of the worlds.

In The Soul Weaver, the epic's third entry, Serriana is again tapped by fate to intercede on behalf of her land when the queen of Leiran herself seeks her out to plead for her aid. the king of Leiran has been incapacitated by agents of the Zhev'Na, a crime which may or may not be connected to the disappearance of their daughter. Serriana agrees to help them even though she is burdened by her own labors. her family, such as it is, is set to be ended by the culmination of the destructive plans of the Zhev'Na. Only a miracle can save them, and Leiran, from ruination.

In Daughter of The Ancients, the final instalment in the epic, the arrival of a thousand-years-dead princess from the wastelands of the Zhev'Na throws the slowly recovering world of the D'Arnathy into chaos. How will she, the eldest heir to the D'Arnathy throne be integrated into the existing ruling structure? Is she as innocent and wronged as she seems, or is she the last ditch ploy of dying gods for one final measure of revenge.? Serriana and her family endeavor to discover the Princess' ultimate purpose while the fates of three worlds hang in the balance.

a sweeping epic, full of consequential deeds and unimaginable dangers, The Bridge of D'Arnath is a difficult, messy adventure. Ms. Berg commands a lyrical pen that does wonderful credit to her work here, blessing it with prose nearly as fine as poetry. But while her facility with language is second to very few, her plots leave a great deal to be desired. Events in this epic lurch from apocalyptic catastrophe to apocalyptic catastrophe, rarely pausing to allow its actors, let alone its readers, to catch their breath. Worse than its implausibility, though, is the degree to which the all-too-frequent explosions, like a bad summer blockbuster, numb the reader, inoculating him to the drama of the piece.

More than the troubled plot, though, Ms. Berg's epic is hobbled by a cast of characters who are rarely allowed to be themselves. Minds are sundered, identities are stolen, and souls are forced into the bodies of those who do not want them. And while these devices allow Ms. Berg to play with ideas of fate and consequence, of identity and personality, they leave the reader with little grasp of what these people are like when they aren't being bombarded by any number of mystical forces. It is, then, no surprise that Serriana is the series' most successful character. for in addition to being a strong-willed heroine worthy of the thousands of pages devoted to her, she is the only one who does not, at some juncture, have her mind scrambled by one godlike force or another.

Let there be no doubt that there is quality here. for all its flaws, The Bridge of D'Arnath bears strong resemblances to the giants of fantasy whose works inspired it. but instead of coalescing from its source materials into its own, distinct being, it is a Frankenstein of Tolkienian questing, Martinian betrayals and Jordanian beauty. It's as if the author conjured up a heroine and welded onto this framework her favorite bits of any number of her own heroes. Unfortunately for her, the weld points are all-too visible to the naked eye.

Interesting work, but the degree to which it is bedeviled by a bloated plot and deformed characters prevents it from taking flight and ascending to the upper echelons of the genre. (2/5 Stars)

The Darkness That Comes Before: The Prince Of Nothing 01 by R. Scott Bakker

From The week of April 23, 2012

Though the countless generations of humanity that have lived across the centuries have little of custom or culture in common, they do each share one disturbing characteristic. Each generation produces, at one point or another, a few tortured souls who believe that the apocalypse is nigh, that the world they know so well is ending, and that only they are capable of warning the poor, ignorant masses of their collective fate. We may, at some point, discover the source of the strange, existential impulse that empowers this eschatology, but such knowledge is almost secondary to a deeper truth, that, on some profound level, we must simultaneously want and fear the end of the world and whatever that may herald for ourselves and those we love. We must want, in short, to live in interesting times, to play our parts in an epic drama that dwarfs all else that has come before.

In all this desire, though, in all this fervor for the end times, do the doomsdayers truly comprehend what they are anticipating? Can they grasp the bloodshed, the chaos, and the darkness that would arise from an actual apocalypse? And if so, would they rue what they were so eager to declare? This apocalyptic novel from Mr. Bakker leaves little doubt that heralds of end times are but children playing with shadows, that true darkness is far more profound and fearsome than any of us can imagine.

On a world riven by magic and faith, destiny and prophecy, sorcerers, priests and emperors vie for control of Eaerwa, a diverse continent home to both urban cities and rural steps, self-indulgent nobles and war-hardened tribesmen. Of course, Eaerwa wasn't always so ripe for power-plays. Not 2,000 years earlier, it was all-but-depopulated by the First Apocalypse, a continental conflict that turned both the people and their culture to ashes. But the passing of two millennia has not only restored imperial government and mercantile trade to the land, it has allowed the lessons of the past to slip into shadow, forgotten by competing forces whose yearning for power and dominance compel them to violent action.

The result is the Holy War, a conflict that pits two deeply divergent sects of the same faith against one another in hopes of reclaiming a city holy to both sides. But though this conflict is bound to claim the lives of countless souls, selling their families and the continent at large into economic and social chaos, it is almost secondary to deeper forces at play, forces that are awakening after centuries of being thought banished or dead. And for all of the terrors war can summon, they are as nothing to the nightmares this new darkness heralds. A second apocalypse is imminent, ready to return this still wounded world to rubble.

The first instalment of an ambitious trilogy, The Darkness That Comes Before is a fascinating piece of fantasy fiction that arguably has more in common with epic poems and Greek tragedies than it does with its genre's customary fare. Rife with philosophy and violence, it is both sacred and profane, as drenched in the fanaticism of zealots as it is the opportunism of tyrants attempting to capitalize on such faith. In this, it is an deeply political novel that boldly sets out to suck the reader down into a world as intensely drawn as it is utterly foreign, a world of godlike magicians and beleaguered whores, spoiled emperors and holy prophets. These opposing and competing forces occupy the heart of this blood-soaked work, fighting for dominance over a sprawling and, at times, bewildering tale.

But as much as Mr. Bakker succeeds in injecting his fiction with the philosophy of high literature, as much as he manages to bring Eaerwa to light in all its complex depravity, The Darkness That Comes Before is nonetheless a decidedly unlikeable novel. Its characters are all-but-universally hateful. Yes, there are moments when Mr. Bakker's protagonists manage to elevate themselves from the mire, but even these moments are characterized by despair, confusion, and an overriding sense of doom. There is not a spark of joy to be found anywhere within these 700 unpleasant pages.

Mr. Bakker should be commended for his achievements here. It is a rare talent who can conceive of such a rich world and animate it with such violent flair. But his characters are mere two-dimensional puppets, pieces to be moved on the cosmic chessboard. The author never allows his readers to empathize with them, let alone love or admire them. All such emotion is lost in the everpresent sense of gloom and repulsiveness that clings to each of his actors who are, for all their sweat and toil, uncompelling.

For me, the journey ends here. For what Mr. Bakker forgot, in the creation of his nuanced world, was to imprint upon his story something like a reason for the reader to keep turning the page. For all its art, distasteful and disappointing... (2/5 Stars)

The Mistborn Trilogy: Books 2 and 3 by Brandon Sanderson

From The Week of March 19, 2012

In any discussion about the problems of power, its abuse is invariably the first point raised. For abuse of power is not only often obvious and blatant, it is easily agitated against given that most of us imagine ourselves above such failings. We believe that we possess the strength of character to avoid temptation. However, there's arguably a more pervasive problem with power; its use in general.

Like a boulder plunged into a pond, the deployment of power, no matter how good-intentioned, creates a ripple effect which sets into motion consequences the actor never intended, much less envisioned. In other words, just as much harm can come from doing good as doing ill, provided that the doer of good has not carefully considered his actions. This nuanced and important lesson pervades the final two instalments of the exciting if long-winded Mistborn Trilogy. It is a lesson learned much to the cost of its characters.

In The Well of Ascension, the trilogy's second volume, two years have elapsed since the death of the Lord Ruler, the iron-fisted demigod who used violence and death to maintain peace in his ash-laden realm. But instead of the peace and harmony anticipated by his overthrowers, the Lord Ruler's fall has created chaos in the Final Empire. Predicated on a strict, authoritarian hierarchy, the imperium, in place for a thousand years, is, without its godhead, a crumbling edifice, the continuing deterioration of which has overwhelmed the efforts of the rebels to bring about the changes their insurgency promised. Despite their best efforts to institute a constitutional monarchy, injustice, rebellion and destitution abound. For such a harsh and omnipotent state cannot be so easily swept away. And in the meantime, without the harsh but ubiquitous agents of the Lord Ruler to keep the state running, anarchy and confusion are the immediate results of Kelsier's revolution.

But hope remains. If Vin, the one-time street urchin turned hero, can find the Well of Ascension, a fabled but ultimately mysterious source of power, perhaps the land can be saved from the increasingly burdensome heaps of ash that are destroying what remains of the Final Empire's cropland. Perhaps it can be a demonstration of the good that the new regime intends to bring to the people. Perhaps it can save a dying world from its apparently inevitable collapse. Of course, such legends have a habit of being too good to be true.

In The Hero of Ages, which flows on directly from The Well of Ascension, the apocalypse has truly drawn nigh. Since the Lord Ruler's death, the everpresent mists, which have characterized the land for a thousand years, have grown bolder, consuming those brave souls who dare to venture into its nighttime embrace. Many return from the mists, but some are changed in ways they cannot understand. Might the mists have a purpose? Might they too be an enemy of the beleaguered people of the Final Empire? Or is this just another sign that all things are moving towards a final, climactic confrontation between the forces of creation and destruction?

While the Final Empire's new regime scrambles to extend its protection to the most far flung regions of the kingdom, a new power is on the loose, a power that seeks to fulfil an ancient bargain, a power that wants nothing more than to bury in ash those stubborn humans who've refused to go down with their empire. It's all too much for the band of one-time rebels. Attacked on all fronts, by nightmares, by gods, by the very environment that once sheltered them, events are overtaking them, backing them into a corner from which there is no escape. Ruin will have his day. But for the slim hopes of an ancient prophecy, doom is certain.

Though they lack the excitement and originality of The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages bring the Mistborn Trilogy to a satisfying and apocalyptic conclusion. To replace the rebellious, conspiratorial energy that electrified the first volume, Mr. Sanderson taps into that most existential of human fears, the end of the world, riding this nihilistic wave to a most pleasing if cartoonish conclusion. Throughout, the author has demonstrated a consistent capacity to evolve his characters. More importantly, he allows them to err, to be fooled, to act wrongly, selfishly. In other words, to act human. And it is this humanity which helps to counteract Mr. Sanderson's tendency to rely too heavily on cliche.

The plot here leaves room for both praise and criticism. The former stems from Mr. Sanderson's courageous willingness to dig deeply into his themes. Throughout, while his heroes stereotypically bttle against overwhelming odds, he unflinchingly deconstructs the origins and the utility of religion, truth, destiny and power. His is not the only work of fantasy to raise such complex subjects, but the extent to which he treats them with the gravitas they deserve elevates Mistborn well above the crowd.

The latter stems from numerous sources. The author's over-reliance on Deus Ex Machina is troubling. For a series based on the notions of personal choice, Mistborn's conclusion smacks far too much of predetermination for comfort. More over, Mr. Sanderson's decision, to use epitaphs to relate the exposition of his mythology proves to be tiresome. The technique has some initial charm, but it eventually suggests an inability to gradually reveal the backstory through conventional methods, such as having the characters discover fundamental truths on their own. Worse yet, Mr. Sanderson does a poor job concealing his reveals. This wouldn't be a problem if the author's intent wasn't so clearly to shock and amaze his readers with clever twists at the key moments of the series. Poorly concealing the fates and roles of his characters ensures that the attentive reader is both unsurprised and unexcited by Mistborn's primary revelations.

Notwithstanding its warts, Mistborn is an entertaining trilogy with a vivid world, an imaginative magic system, an interesting mythology and compelling characters. The extent to which the author reveals his hand too early can be forgiven when the rewards are so rich. The most pleasing of these is the series' main character. Vin is a wonderful heroine, a battered angel with broken wings. Her story, along with the author's capacity to express her humanity, her doubts in the face of her superhuman nature, causes her to stand out amongst a sea of similar creations. The series, for all its virtues, would have collapsed under its own portentous weight without Vin's sardonic energy.

A worthy and memorable conclusion to what The Final Empire so magnificently launched. (3/5 Stars)

The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen

From The Week of February 13, 2012

Human beings are far from perfect. Whether it's the mundane error that manifests from simple inattention or the harsh words spat in a moment of anger, we do and say things we would give anything to take back. For while errors are instantaneous, their consequences can last a lifetime: ending relationships, ruining careers, destroying families. But while a single human's thoughtlessness has the power to wound, civilization's wrongs can end the world. After all, only a civilization's racism, xenophobia, stubbornness, can defeat entire populations. Only this groupthink can make possible the aggressive mindset necessary to create nuclear weapons programs and use their destructiveness against sentient beings. If we'd give anything to take back rash words, what would we give to take back 9/11, or Hiroshima, or the Kennedy Assassination, moments in time in which the world shuddered onto a newer, darker course? Mr. Mullen speculates in his fascinating and expansive novel.

In present day Washington D.C., the nexus of the world's greatest empire, individual events, insignificant in their singularity, are converging fast on a single moment in time. Though,separately, they lack the necessary momentum to throw the world into chaos, collectively, their power might well ignite a nuclear war that will devour civilization as we know it. The Conflagration, as it will be known, will plunge humanity into centuries of darkness and despair, survivors scrabbling to piece back together a few pieces of their broken world just in the hope of making the next day a bit better than the previous. Anything more ambitious than that will be beyond them for generations. But then order will re-emerge, an order that will allow the weaving together of a society, a newer and better evolution of humanity which will not make the same mistakes of the prior civilization, a humanity that will strive to be perfect, harmonious and pure.

In this future time, when confronted with evidence that a rebellious faction within this supposedly perfect society is using time-travel technology to return to previous eras, in an attempt to meant the broken past, this new and better civilization flails for answers. How could such an abomination occur right under their own noses? Feverishly, they train a small squad of special agents to follow the dissidents back into the timeline, armed with orders to kill the tamperers at every opportunity. History must be preserved. For if history is tinkered with, what will become of the perfect civilization? What if it never emerges? What if humanity is snuffed out and darkness reigns forever?

Zed, one such operative, is returned to the early 21st century where, in the shadow of the Beltway, he works and kills to preserve the future. Ruthlessly determined to execute his mission, Zed's belief in his destiny does not waver until he begins to encounter alarming discrepancies between what he was told by his handlers and the truth he can see with his own eyes. Afraid to return to his time for fear his growing suspicions will be confirmed, Zed turns, instead, to a grieving woman whose brother was killed in the Iraq War and an idealistic but disenchanted agent of the megalithic national-security apparatus to help him uncover a terrifying truth, that nothing is what it seems to be and that the fate of humanity now rests in his uncertain hands.

The Revisionists is a methodical and moving portrait of human desire and the lengths to which we will go to make our wishes reality. Zed, the operative from the future, is fuelled by grief born of tragedy which blinds him to the lies he's been told. But when the blinders come off, he knows he must act, if only to honor the memory of those he has lost. Tasha, the sister of the dead lieutenant, is radicalized by her despair into opposing an endless war that has claimed so many and done so little. Leo, the national security agent, tries to do one good deed to make up for a terrible mistake and, in doing so, sets off a chain of events that nearly brings down the whole house of cards, all for the affections of a woman through whom he can expunge his sins. Yes, this is fundamentally science fiction, but the author has chosen to deploy the conventions of the genre as a means of telling a human story about love and loss and their unparalleled power to change the world.

Mr. Mullen brings an essayist's gravitas to one of science fiction's most abused tropes (time travel), creating one of the most thoughtful examinations of this endlessly fascinating technology in some time. His conclusion, that it, like nuclear weapons, is a power we are not sufficiently wise to wield, rings true. After all, while technology is amoral, its wielders are not. They can put it to whatever use they desire, good or ill, a prospect that should rightfully dampen the enthusiasm of the proponents of time travel.

We learn from our mistakes. If we erase them, we learn nothing. If darkness is the price we must pay for our folly, then darkness it is. For anything else is just an easy way out. And we are already experts at that. (4/5 Stars)

Armies Of Heaven by Jay Rubenstein

From The Week of January 16, 2011

Though our religions generally deserve credit for demanding that their adherents follow their charitable instincts and cleave to their moral codes, these benefits are drowned by the oceans of blood that have been spilled over both their gods and their forced conversions. Throughout history, we repeatedly witness these faiths, born out of injustice and despair, coalesce around a central figure whose noble example is a shining beacon of hope in the darkness of a corrupted world. But while some are inspired to live better lives, others are invariably inspired to harness the immense powers unleashed by these saviors, powers which are eventually codified into authoritarian institutions bent upon the preservation of their influence and their gravitas, not the betterment of the people they purport to serve. It is through this corrosive process that a faith like Christianity, animated by the notion of noble self-sacrifice, becomes the banner around which murderers and madmen rally, eager for a taste of God's glory. This piece from Mr. Rubenstein is surely one of the west's most vivid examples of this hypocrisy in motion. It won't soon be forgotten.

Though later centuries would make convincing claims to be called the most destructive in human history, the hundred years, from 1000 to 1099 AD ended in spectacular destruction. It harbored the first of a series of savage, existential conflicts between east and west that would eventually be christened the Crusades by the Christians who initiated them. Brought about by the ascension of Islamic power in the east and the waning of the Byzantine bulwark that had, for the most part, kept Muslims from European shores, western Christians, plagued by a fractured church and a disunited continent, were, in 1095, rallied, by Pope Urban II, around the notion of the liberation of Jerusalem from the Saracens that had rested her from their rightful ownership.

In answer to Urban II's call, an army of nobles and peasants, sinners and innocents, was formed in France. For this was a force willing to take in anyone who had but a single desire, to take the cross upon their breast and, with Christ in their hearts, journey to distant Jerusalem and evict the filthy turks from the most holiest city. A mighty goal, but to achieve it this army, composed of as many preachers and monks as warriors and strategists, would have to sail treacherous seas, navigate the corruption of Byzantium, stave off the horrors of starvation and dissolution, and conquer vast territories before they could even reach Jerusalem. A long and bloody road filled with betrayals and bloodshed, hardship and heresy, and a price that may well be ruined in the taking.

From the Council of Clermont to the massacre at Jerusalem, Mr. Rubenstein, a historian of the medieval world, has, in Armies of Heaven vividly reconstructed the politics and the realities of both the 11th century and the apocalyptic conflict that ravaged it. Couching the First Crusade in the context of End Times, Mr. Rubenstein chronicles the earnest belief among Christians that the world was coming to an end and that their taking of Jerusalem held a prominent place in that eschatology. In this, the author expands our understanding of the conflict's beginnings even while, with revolting detail, he recounts the perfidy of the crusading army's leaders, the insanity of its preachers and the savagery of its warriors. These scenes of horror will not only leave a mark; they leave no doubt as to the extent to which ideology, particularly spiritual beliefs, entangles humans in knots of ultimately murderous logic. There is nothing here of Christ, at least as he comes down to us in the 21st century.

Powerful and informative... Mr. Rubenstein's work possesses the customary dryness of most scholarly histories. However, it is also animated by the undeniable nihilism of the period and the savagery of the quest to take Jerusalem. Both have the power to leave the reader gaping with dismay. An eye opener and, thus, neither for the faint of heart nor the blind of faith. (4/5 Stars)

The Death of Grass by John Christopher

From The Week of November 07, 2011

Though humanity has only enjoyed civilization for the last few millennia of its two-million-year history, those of us alive today cannot imagine a world without its blessings. After all, this Earth of societies and governments, of industry and commerce, is all we, and our ancestors, have ever known, banishing into history the necessities of sleeping in caves for shelter, huddling around fires for warmth, and killing animals for survival. However, much as we would like to think of civilization as permanent, steps taken that cannot be undone, it is, in reality, a fragile construct that only persists thanks to the unspoken agreement of the many to abide by the laws of the land. Threaten our safety, jeopardize our futures, take away our abundance and it would be only a matter of years before we returned to the animal behaviors that defined us for so long. This is the stirring, disturbing and thrilling lesson of Mr. Christopher's existential classic, The Death of Grass.

In a 1950s England recovering swiftly from the deprivations of the Second World War, life is characterized by order and prosperity. Sure, inequities persist, but most families get by in a country that is still sufficiently rural to feed, clothe and empower the majority of its citizens. However, no matter how well-oiled the machinery of civilization may be, it is always vulnerable to surprises, disturbances that cause vital components of its system to cease functioning. When word filters out of China that a virus there is rotting out the particular strain of grass that yields rice, their most critical crop, there is, in England, more sympathy than concern for civilization. But when attempts to combat the virus cause it to mutate into a strain with the power to kill off all forms of grass on the planet, then it becomes painfully clear, to everyone everywhere, that life will never again be the same.

With every grain-based crop failing, with Britain's 50 million souls waking up to the realization that the supply of fish and root vegetables cannot possibly sustain all of them, John Custance, an architect, his wife Anne and their two children mount a journey from their now worthless home in doomed London to a valley in Westmorland where, for years now, John's brother David has operated the family farm he inherited from their father. Initially augmented by John's friend Roger and his family, the party, captained by John, quickly grows to incorporate more desperate people seeking out safe harbor in a world that has, virtually overnight, descended into lawlessness and barbarism. For without an abundance of resources, a mad scramble for what's left will inevitably take place, an all-consuming drive for food that will leave little energy left over for the sustenance of civilization. On the way, the Custance clan will have to learn which of their morals they can afford to keep and which will have to be sacrificed in a world now defined by the singular will to survive.

Though The Death of Grass is not without its flaws, this dark and gripping novel from Mr. Christopher is powerfully and movingly conducted by its premise, that civilization depends upon a few key pillars to remain upright and that, should any of those pillars suddenly crumble, humanity will swiftly collapse back into the abysmal chaos of survival and death that characterized so much of the species' history. Mr. Christopher argues, rather convincingly, that human civilization is an outgrowth of our planet's vast resources which simply cannot be captured by one person, or even a small band of tyrants. It is so ubiquitous that it must be shared and enjoyed by most, allowing for prosperity to fuel society. Remove that abundance swiftly and without warning, reduce the supply of necessities to an amount that must be fought over in order to be had, enjoyed? Then might will make right and the darkness of feudalism will re-capture us all.

But as much as the novel succeeds in communicating the full horror of this reasonable, if pessimistic, deduction, a few key flaws prevent it from reaching its full potential. Published in 1956, The Death of Grass is very much a work of its era. Female characters here are largely neglected not only by the author but by his male characters. This is somewhat understandable given that the subject matter concerns paternalistic 1950s england, but not even in feudal societies were women this marginalized. They had voices, wills and purposes. Here, they lack even that much. The most developed woman in our roster of characters is John's wife, Anne, and her singular purpose appears to be to highlight the extent to which John Custance has changed from the man she married pre-collapse, transforming into the hardened killer of the new England.

More annoying than this form of period paternalism, though, is the extent to which the personalities of the main players shift in order to suit the author's needs. Some of this is forgivable; the reader understands quite well that minor characters are little more than plot devices to thrust the story along, but John and Roger are the story's two most developed characters and their behaviors are in-flux for most of the novel, hardening in the face of their circumstances, only to soften, only to harden again. The authoritative Roger is especially victimized by this schizophrenia, losing his assertiveness only to regain it and lose it once more for no apparent reason.

This is a swift and grim work of post-apocalyptic fiction that is vivid in its darkness, shocking in its violence, and provocative in its message, but the author's inability to provide the reader with a set of solidly familiar characters, and his incapacity to fully understand feudal England, mars the piece. (3/5 Stars)

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven And Jerry Pournelle

From The Week of October 03, 2011

In any discussion about human virtues, patience and kindness are invariably cited as the most desirable. But while these are qualities of character we would appreciate in any of our fellows, surely adaptability laps them, and any of their brethren, for usefulness. After all, most of us are not creatures of change; a million years of evolution has seen to that, instilling in us a desire to survive that causes us to favor the familiar and reject the unknown. But we cannot always count on our lives being stable. We cannot always count on the next day being like the last. Sometimes, disaster strikes. Sometimes, the next day is September 11th, 2001.

This is why adaptability is so valuable. For on these days that are like no other, while we flounder in confusion, helpless to find our equilibrium in a world falling apart, those among us who can change, who do adapt, thrive. They seize chaos, wringing from it what they require to survive and then they move on to build new lives in different tomorrows. Though Lucifer's Hammer is rightfully held as a classic of science fiction, and a seminal work of disaster fiction, it is the extent to which it investigates this question of rigidity versus adaptability, of the familiar versus the unknown, that truly grants it greatness.

Originally published in 1977, Lucifer's Hammer transports the reader back into the heady world of late 1970s Los Angeles where the Tv cameras are bright, where fame is priceless, and where the American Dream seems alive and well. Capitalism and human ingenuity have created a new and exciting society characterized by affordable technology and hopes for future abundance. Into this glamorous world strays an astronomical curiosity. A comet has just been spotted hurtling past Saturn, on a course for Earth. For months, humanity enjoys the spectacle, comforted by reassurances from the scientific community that this massive thunderbolt of rock and ice will pass harmlessly by. But as the comet grows near, and as the odds of it striking Earth increase with each day's passing, "Hammer Fever" grips a humanity transfixed by the onrushing comet. While some organize viewing parties, others raid stores for supplies and hit high ground, preparing for the worst. But no amount of preparation can ready one for doom's day.

The Hamner-Brown comet was supposed to miss Earth by a million miles, but when, on that fateful Tuesday, it defies the odds and smashes into the cradle of humanity, boiling its oceans and blurring out its sun behind a deluge of saltwater rain that baptizes the land, no one has time to marvel at the odds. Instantly, Earth's coastlines are submerged, civilization there wiped from the map. The lucky thousands who survive Hammerfall cling to mountain ranges too high for the water to cleans them, watching as their numbers are swelled by those smart enough, or lucky enough, to have escaped cities now vanished beneath monstrous tsunamis. Civilization gone in a heartbeat... Humanity and all its works persist by the thinnest of threads. Will it hang on in this new world of endless winter, or will divisiveness and discord prove too much for the remnants, plunging them into war and ruin? The fate of the species now rests in the hands of the few. On one side is the light of civilization; on the other the darkness of religiosity and madness. Only fate can split them, fate and the hope for tomorrow.

Though Lucifer's Hammer is slow to catch fire, Misters Niven and Pournelle have combined to produce, here, a masterful work of post-apocalyptic fiction. Drafting in dozens of characters, the narrative struggles at times, fragmented between too many points of view for comfortable consumption. However, when the comet strikes, radically altering civilization in an instant, this character-developing spadework is no longer laborious; it is the fuel by which the story ignites. For at Hammerfall, the reader has lived with wonderfully human characters, their sympathies engaged with real people with real problems now having to confront the gravest challenge of their lives. Yes, this is a novel of action and suspense, with wars waged between order and chaos, progress and atavism. For all this though, it will be these personalities I remember, the good and the evil, the brave and the cowardly, the smart and the foolish. For it is they who transform this from a war story into a philosophical piece about humanity's capacity to survive in the face of a suddenly hostile world.

I first read Lucifer's Hammer 20 years ago, when I was an impressible boy. Often, when we revisit books that moved us in our formative years, they disappoint. After all, adults are far better equipped to pick out mistakes and cliches than children. And so I was pleasantly surprised to find that this classic, but for two respects, withstands the test of time. The setting is now horribly dated; the idea that the United States government would, at the behest of egghead scientists, sent astronauts into space to study a comet now seems ludicrous in 2011. More over, the female characters here are little more than caricatures, starved for the screen-time necessary to animate into full-fledged people. However, in every other sense, Lucifer's Hammer remains a thrillride that towers over its genre. In 35 years, only The Road can challenge it for apocalyptic power. (4/5 Stars)