BOOK REVIEW: Stephen Carter's PALACE COUNCIL

Stephen Carter's novel Palace Council is the third in his series of "Darker Nation" mysteries. The first were The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White, both of which I have read and reviewed previously on this blog.

I liked both of Carter's previous mysteries (although I must confess a preference for the first, simply because of the multiple chess references) and haven't picked up his fourth work of fiction, Jericho's Fall, because it is in a completely new genre which I am uninterested in (spy thriller).

Palace Council is not as good as it's two predecessors. This time, instead of a straightforward murder mystery with a pinch of political intrigue and family drama in the mix, Carter has decided to write a faux historical novel.


The two main characters are Aurelia Treene and Eddie Wesley. Aurelia marries Kevin Garland, who is the son of "perhaps the richest Negro in the United States" in the 1950s. The Garland family played central roles in Carter's first two books. Eddie is in love with Aurelia, but he's also a dedicated writer. He ends up with two National Book Awards before he's 40 and a wanderlust which has him interacting with all the major characters of the era, including Joseph P. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Edgar Hoover, Langston Hughes and many more.


However, the problem is that Carter has lost focus on what made his first two "Darker Nation" novels so interesting: they were centered around the Darker Nation! This idea is a clever concept that African-Americans have created their own, parallel social strata and power structures in America which are entangled  but distinct from the white hierarchy which rules America. It is Carter's mordant portrayal of this Darker Nation which animates his other novels and its absence in Palace Council leads to a plodding tale.


I do hope that Carter returns to his previous setting in future mysteries; for now, I would only recommend reading Palace Council for completeness. Otherwise just stop at reading The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White, the first two in the series.


Title: Palace Council
Hardcover: 528 pages.
Publisher: Knopf.
Published: July 8, 2008.

OVERALL GRADE: B.

BOOK REVIEW: Alastair Reynolds' Redemption Ark

Alastair Reynolds' Redemption Ark is the second novel in his Revelation Space series. I was turned on to this work by Mark Chitty's Walker of Worlds blog, who is also a big fan or Peter F. Hamilton and Neal Asher, two other big British science fiction writers.

Midway through reading the first book (see MadProfessah review) I ordered the next two books of the series from Alibris.com right away.

The best part of  Redemption Ark is the return of two of the main characters from the first book, Ana Khouri and Irina Volyova. Additionally, Reynolds introduces us to the Conjoiners, technologically advanced humans who have learned how to integrate nanotechnology with human physiology so that they have greatly increased strength and speed, machine-level mental processing capacity and speed as well as the ability to network with all other Conjoiners within range. Basically, to a Conjoiner any form of electronics is not only accessible but manipulable.

Of course, this being Reynolds, the plot of the story is the main attraction, and boy is it a doozy. Following on the events of Revelation Space, the powerful "hell class" weapons that are housed in the bowels of the 4-kilometer-long ship called Nostalgia for Infinity become the prize for a trio of very determined individuals.

The first member of the group looking for the weapons are a group of Conjoiners headed by a woman named Skade. The second group is led by Skade's previous deputy named Clavain who had defected from the group of humans called the Demarchists who are currently fighting an interstellar war against the Conjoiners when his Demarchist commander brother tried to kill him. Clavain finds out that Skade has developed a fleet of ships that can fly very close to the speed of light in order to have an "escape route" to another galaxy if the Inhibitors from Revelation Space, predatory machines (dubbed "Wolves") who exterminate species whom they detect have achieved interstellar flight, decide to eliminate humanity. The third group consists of Khouri and Volyova, who (together with archeologist Dan Sylveste) discovered the Inhibitors' purpose in the Resurgam system and currently have possession and access to the weapons in the hull of Nostalgia for Infinity. By using the hell class weapons Volyova and Khouri in the first book Revelation Space not only alerted the Inhibitors of humanity's existence but also alerted the Conjoiners of the existence and location of the hell class weapons (which they had created and lost hundreds of years before).

In addition to a race to get to Resurgam by the two Conjoiner factions, Redemption Ark features multiple asides in which Reynolds provides extensive the details of the Wolves. They turn out to be machines intelligences who have been around for billions of years and are culling life in order to save it from extinction when the Milky Way collides with the nearest galaxy in a few billion years. The characters of Volyova and Khouri are fleshed out and Clavain is also a very interesting new character.

The result is a very exciting work of very hard science fiction replete with fascinating ideas which is probably the high point in the Revelation Space trilogy.

Author: Alastair Reynolds.
Title: Redemption Ark.
Length: 704 pages.
Publisher: Ace.
Date: May 25, 2004.

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0). 

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space

Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space is the first novel I read by this British author. His work is reminiscent of another British sci-fi author, the brilliant Peter F. Hamilton. Hamilton happens to be one of my favorite writers, so it is great praise from me to compare Reynolds favorably to Hamilton.

It takes a while to get going but around page 50 or so it had sucked me in and I had great difficulty in putting the book down. By about page 200, I started looking to buy the sequels Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap on Alibris.com.

The main idea of the Revelation Space universe is that there is something, which eventually gets named the Inhibitors, that eliminates sentient species soon after they have demonstrated the ability to travel between stars. Once they have demonstrated that they can travel significant fractions of the speed of light, something completely annihilates the species and they become extinct. This explains why spacefaring humans have discovered the remains, fossils and artefacts of nearly a dozen technological species, but never a live alien. It's an intriguing premise, but it merely serves as background to the central storylines which are more character-driven.

Here is a great summary of the characters in Revelation Space written by Ryan Anderson at The Martian Chronicles blog

 The main character, Dan Sylveste is a scientist studying that civilization, driven by an unstoppable compulsion to solve the mystery of what happened to the Amarantin. Meanwhile, Ana Khouri is an assassin who has been hired by the mysterious “Mademoiselle” to kill Sylveste and prevent him from discovering the answer. A third main character, Volyova, is one of only a handful of surviving crewmembers on a starship that holds some of the most powerful weapons ever concieved. The ship is gradually being consumed by a virus emanating from their captain, who is kept frozen in stasis to slow the spread of the infection. 

I think it is pretty significant that the two of the main characters are female. Some reviewers have complained that none of the main characters are very likable, but there is no question that they are interesting and intriguing.

I really liked seeing the world through the eyes of Irina Volyova and Anna Khouri. Dan Sylveste is the most important character in terms of the Revelation Space universe, but he was not the character that most appealed to me.

The book itself is paced pretty slowly, but is well worth the time invested to unwrap the intricate, overlapping plots. It is a great introduction to the gripping, very hard sci-fi universe of Alastair Reynolds, a place any fa of real space opera will enjoy.

Author: Alastair Reynolds.
Title: Revelation Space.
Length: 592 pages.
Publisher: Ace.
Date: May 28, 2002.

OVERALL GRADE: B+/A- (3.5/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: B+.

Celebrity Friday: Eric, Sookie, Bill Of True Blood

As this season of True Blood heats up (I think it is probably the best so far) three stars of the show's central romantic triangle are on the cover of the latest Rolling Stone magazine: Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse), Peter Sarsgaard (Eric Northman, vampire) and Stephen Moyer (Bill Compton, vampire).

Hat/tip to Wonder Man.

BOOK REVIEW: Paul McAuley's Outer Series

The Quiet War	Gardens of the Sun

Paul J. McAuley's The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun are the first two books in what I will call "the Outer series" although it is not clear if there will be more. In researching authors like Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks and Peter F. Hamilton the name Paul J. McAuley (and Ian Whates) came up.

The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun tell the story of an Earth which has undergone severe climate change which has led to vast political upheaval. There are now only three political superpowers: Greater Brazil (basically South America and North America), Europe and Pacifica (China and India). Humanity has split into multiple strains, with colonies on Mars, the Moon and the Outer Planets. During the last war, the Mars colonists attempted to arrange for an asteroid to hit the Earth so the Chinese re-directed a comet to land on their colony and successfully re-directed the asteroid so it missed our planet.

Animosity between people still on earth and the people in outer space persist decades after these events, especially since the Outers as they are called, have taken to genetically adapting themselves to low-gravity conditions, using bio-engineering in ways that people on Earth find morally offensive. After almost ruining the planet with pollution in the 20th and 21st centuries, the people of Earth in the 23rd century are busily cleaning up their world and attempting to reverse the damage. They look upon any meddling with nature with suspicion.

Both Gardens of the Sun and The Quiet War are chock-full of the details of living in low and zero gravity, combined with a plot that features intricate, internecine political intrigue.

Overall, I would not say that these McAuley books are in the same league as the works of Hamilton or Reynolds, which are long, suspenseful, totally engrossing works of space opera. They are worth reading, however, and a reasonable diversion but not a substitute for hard science fiction, if that is where your tastes lie.

Title: The Quiet War

Author: Paul J. McAuley

Length: 405 pages.
Publisher: Pyr.
Date: September 22, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+.

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A-.

Title: Gardens of the Sun

Author: Paul J. McAuley

Length: 411 pages.
Publisher: Pyr.
Date: February 2010,.

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+.

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: B+.

BOOK REVIEW: Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake

At a local used bookstore in Glendale I finally got my hands on a copy of Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake, one of the rare works of speculative fiction to have won the Nebula, Hugo and Locust award. I often read these books and Dreamsnake is one of the few books that is double Hugo-Nebula winner that I have not read yet. The others are Lois McMaster Bujold's Paladin of Souls and Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains of Paradise.

Most double winners are classic books, that deserve to be re-read over and over again. Connie Willis Doomsday Book, Frank Herbert's Dune, David Brin's Startide Rising and Issac Asimov's The Gods Themselves fall into that category. Interestingly, recently I tried to re-read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed and I could not get through it. A few years ago I finally read Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama and was surprised at how painful it was to get through it.

So, I really did not have high expectations for Dreamsnake. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Dreamsnake is about a Healer named Snake who uses snakes to heal people. The book mentions repeatedly that she uses the rare dreamsnake to help people who have serious (potentially fatal) illnesses, by either curing them or easing their transition to death. What's curious is that during the course of the book, Snake heals several people without a dreamsnake, and in one case even loses a patient despite not having one of the alien serpents at hand.

One of the key features of Dreamsnake is its depiction of a very different society. It is primarily agrarian, with almost no technology and very curious cultural practices (like not wanting to tell acquaintances your "true name" and a completely different view of contraception). One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the completely laissez-faire approach to sexuality. Most adult relationships are in partnerships of three, usually two women and one man or two men and one woman.

A drawback of the book is the somewhat stilted nature of the prose. The sentences are very short and not very lyrical in nature. I'm not sure if this is because the book is over thirty years old, but I suspect that much be a factor. Another weakness of the book is the central character Snake. As depicted, she is not a very likable person and was very hard for this reader to identify with. She is moody, cranky, unattractive and uncertain. She is also brave and dedicated to helping others, almost to a fault.

The story resolves itself in the end in a somewhat unsurprising manner, with Snake finding love and companionship and a solution to dealing with the lack of dreamsnakes on her world. Overall, I'm glad that I finally read the book but I would not classify it as a classic of the form like most Hugo-Nebula winners.

Title: Dreamsnake.
Author: Vonda McIntyre.
Length: 319 pages.
Publisher: Dell.
Date: June 1979.

OVERALL GRADE: B.

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: B.
IMPACT: B-.
WRITING: B.

BOOK REVIEW: Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Trilogy

TITLE: Hominids
AUTHOR: Robert J. Sawyer
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: B+.

OVERALL GRADE: B+/A- (3.5/4.0).

TITLE: Humans
AUTHOR: Robert J. Sawyer
PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: B.

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).

TITLE: Hybrids
AUTHOR: Robert J. Sawyer
PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: B.
IMPACT: B.
WRITING: B-.

OVERALL GRADE: B-/C+ (3.0/4.0).

Robert J. Sawyer is probably best known now as the author of Flash Forward, on which the now-cancelled ABC television miniseries of the same name was based. However, the Canadian author is also acclaimed for his other science fiction work, which to date have won him Hugo, Nebula and Campbell Memorial awards.

Sawyer is the author of the Neanderthal Parallax, a trilogy of three books: Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids. I read these books this spring when I started watching Flash Forward. Sawyer is one of those speculative fiction authors who has really interesting ideas and is very creative. The central idea of the Neanderthal Parallax is that there are parallel universes, and in one parallel universe the Earth develops with Neanderthals (homo neanderthalis) as the dominant hominid species instead of humans (homo sapiens). When a quantum computer on one of the alternate earths malfunctions, a passage between the two societies is formed and Ponter Boddit, a neanderthal scientist, is transported into a society surrounded by creatures that were extinct on his planet.

Hominids is primarily concerned with using Boddit as a device to compare the two planets and societies where the two different hominid species have developed. Sawyer is at his creative best when he provides us with the details of life on the Neanderthal planet, particularly the social mores and beliefs (i.e. there is no belief in a higher power or "God" in Ponter's planet) through the Neanderthal's reactions and thoughts. Hominids won the 2003 Hugo award for Best Novel and is clearly the best book of the trilogy. Hominids other central character is Mary Vaughn, a Canadian geneticist who is also an expert on neanderthals. Since Sawyer is Canadian, much of the action takes place in Canada. Vaughn is an interesting choice to be the central homo sapiens character in the book. The main deficiency in the book is Sawyer's ham-handedness in the depiction of the characters of Ponter and Mary, as well as some of the other minor characters who are generally one-dimensional in scope.

The sequel to Hominids is Humans. It was also a Hugo award finalist. It continues the brilliant story first began in Hominids but it moves more of the action to the neanderthal version of Earth. In that case, we learn more about the differences in societal structure between neanderthal and human society. Sawyer again does a good job of depicting this surprisingly foreign world but he is somewhat hamstrung because he has to use the character of Mary Vaughn as a vehicle for taking the reader through this world. Vaughn has her own psychological traumas and predilections which influences the way she interacts and experiences the neanderthal planet and its society. Sawyer stoops to some soap opera-like relationship twists that I could have done without in the second book.

The final book in the trilogy is Hybrids which, surprisingly, was also nominated for a Hugo award. It is the least interesting of the three books, and I really only read it because I was curious as to how the plots would be resolved, but by this point I didn't really care. One of the most disturbing sub-plots is resolved in a somewhat obvious manner. Sawyer gets even more heavy-handed in his political allusions to modern Earth society, which I don't disagree with, but is still somewhat annoying.

Overall, the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy is an interesting addition to the science fiction canon, but most readers can just read the first book Hominids and forgo the other two books.

BOOK REVIEW: The Girl Who Played With Fire

The sequel to Stieg Larsson's amazing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is The Girl Who Played with Fire.

As I mentioned in my review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the book was nearly impossible to put down. It's sequel is even more addictive. The third book in what is now being called the Millenium series was released on Tuesday May 25th and is called The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

The first book really doesn't treat Lisbeth Salander as the main character, even though she is clearly the title character. The second book is clearly all about Lisbeth Salander. The book begins with her, the plot centers around her back story and the book ends with her.

There is another mystery in Fire, of course; this time it's a brutal double murder of a couple that occurs the same night (probably in the same hour) as the torture-murder of someone who had abused Lisbeth.

The reader's loyalties are severely tested--could the hyper-intelligent, violent, socially unaware, sexually ambiguous, titular Girl also be a murderer? Mikael Blomkvist, the true main character from Tattoo, returns and is basically the only one who believes in Lisbeth's innocence after she becomes Sweden's #1 Most Wanted criminal, blasted on the front page of every media outlet in the country.

Another interesting feature of Fire is that it includes the internal details of the police investigation to solve the double murder as well as an inside view on the manhunt to track down Lisbeth.

The resolution of the mysteries are skillfully done and by the end of the book we find out a lot more about Lisbeth, especially her family background. But to get there the reader is taken on a nail-bitingly suspenseful ride which is well worth the price of admission: cracking open the book.

Author: Stieg Larsson.
Title: The Girl Who Played with Fire.
Paperback: 656 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition.
Date Published: March 23, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A+.

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson has become a publishing phenomenon. It's a contemporary mystery novel set in Sweden (Stockholm, mostly), written by a debut novelist who died suddenly before his books were officially published.

Happily he wrote three books before he died, and the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest will be released in May 2010. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has also been made into a major (Swedish) motion picture which was released in the United States in March 2010.

The book is centered around Lisbeth Sander, an anti-social hacker with a photographic memory who works with a corporate security form on private investigations of people, as well as Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist/publisher who loses a libel case against a prominent Swedish businessman. The story is set in Sweden, mostly Stockholm and the fictional Hedestad Island.

The plot is incredibly complex, built around three compelling mysteries: solving a disappearance of a 16-year old girl from a remote Swedish island over forty years before, unearthing the truth about the complicated business deal which caused Blomkvist to commit libel and fiiguring out what makes Lisbeth Salander tick.

Salander is one of the great characters in the mystery genre; it is no wonder that Oscar-nominated British actress Carey Mulligan has aggressively gone after (and apparently won) the role, with David Fincher directing.

Despite a viciously negative review from The New York Times, the novel has gone on to become a publishing sensation in several countries and won multiple awards. This is not surprising to understand. Once begun, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is almost impossible to put down. I got it for Christmas last year and had finished it and the sequel before New Year's Eve!

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Author: Stieg Larsson.
Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Paperback: 608 pages.
Publisher: Vintage.
Published: June 23, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: A.

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

2010 Hugo Nominations Announced

The list of nominations for the 2010 Hugo Awards has been announced and the nominees for best science fiction novel are:

• Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
• The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
• Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
• Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
• Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
• The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

Interestingly, three of these books are also on the 2010 Nebula Awards list: The City & The City, Boneshaker and The Windup Girl. The only one of the nominees that I have read is The City & The City and I am a huge fan of Miéville, if not this particular book. I adored Robert Charles Wilson's Spin but have not been able to finish a single book of his since, even though at this point he must be considered a perennial nominee (I didn't get past page 50 of Julian Comstock before gratefully returning it to the library). The description of Robert J. Sawyer's Wake sounds like it will be the only other Hugo nominee that I will be attempting to read in the near future. I've read his Hominids series and he seems to be better at ideas than implementation.

The City & The City is turning out to be the most highly acclaimed speculative fiction book of the past year, having been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction Award and Arthur C. Clarke Award and according to Mark at Walker of Worlds has just won the BSFA. Since he's a Brit he can't be nominated for the Pulitzer but perhaps he'll get shortlisted for The Man Booker? Has any speculative fiction scaled such critical heights before?

BOOK REVIEW: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is a hugely ambitious novel that has been widely celebrated. In fact, it made it to the #6 position on my favorite books of the decade 2000-2009. It was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize as well as a nominee for the Nebula award.

Cloud Atlas is a very fun book to read. I am not surprised that it is a favorite of authors. The book is split into six different stories, each of which is told in a different style, genre and voice.

In some sense, the book is really six novellas or short stories. What is fun as a reader is reading to find the connections between the stories. Generally, the main character in one story is usually seen as having had access to the story we have just read.

Although the six stories cover many different genres, at least two of them are clearly classifiable as science fiction, which is probably one reason that I enjoyed the book so much. Interestingly, the longest story (which is set in a post-apocalyptic world) is my least favorite part of the book and despite finding that section almost unreadable I still evaluated Cloud Atlas as one of my favorite books of the decade.

I believe that David Mitchell should be rewarded for his creativity and imagination at even attempting to create such a unique work as Cloud Atlas. Although it is not completely successful in every aspect, it is still a delightful reading experience that you should not miss!

Title: Cloud Atlas.
Author: David Mitchell.
Paperback: 528 pages.
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Date: August 17, 2004.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.925/4.0)

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: China Miéville's THE CITY & THE CITY

China Miéville, brilliant author of The Scar and Perdido Street Station is back on the top of the critics lists with his latest work, The City & The City.

I am a huge fan of China Miéville's previous fantasy work, and I'm also a big fan of mysteries, so when I heard that the genre-defying British author's latest book was a noir thriller I was excited and intrigued.

The City & The City is a very unusual book (as expected from Miéville) built from a mundane beginning: the body of a murdered woman is found in a bad part of a city and an experienced detective is assigned to the case.

The detective is Inspector Tyador Borlu and the city is Beszel. The other city is Ul Qoma. The city & the city somehow occupy the same geographical space, in what the author calls a "crosshatching" where the residents of each city have their own language, food, culture, dress but have to consciously avoid acknowledging the existence of the other twin city, or be accused of "Breach."

Breach are the mysterious enforcers of the separation between the two cities. Both sides fear breach, and as the story unfolds breach takes on larger-than-life status.

Miéville does an interesting job of subverting and supporting the murder mystery/detective thriller format.

Overall, I was somewhat disappointed by The City & The City. I'm not sure if it is because I had such high expectations from Miéville due to my love of his previous fantasy novels The Scar and Perdido Street Station. One big difference between those works and this latest work is the length. The City & The City is barely half the length of either of those works, and is nowhere as multi-threaded and multi-faceted as those works. This may be due to the form, itself, which of course has an overarching plot imperative: Will the detective solve the mystery and catch who committed the murder?

I think what happens in The City & The City is that the plot is so dominated by this one theme that even the bizarre setting of the two cities is not enough to maintain the level of fascination that Miéville is usually able to sustain when he is creating a work free of the constraints of a specific format like that imposed by the detective procedural.

If you have already read the other Miéville books, I would recommend starting with those and skipping the trip to The City & The City.

Author: China Miéville.
Title: The City & The City.
Length: 336 pages.
Publisher: Del Rey.
Date: May 26, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.4/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B.
WRITING: B+.

BOOK REVIEW: Iain M. Bank's MATTER

Iain M. Banks has been on my list of science fiction authors to try for quite awhile since his name is often mentioned in the same breath as my favorite, British master of space opera Peter F. Hamilton.

I actually tried to read Banks a few years ago when his The Algebraist came out. It got excellent reviews and was nominated for big awards soI picked it up from the library and hated it. I didn't even bother to wrie up a review. In fact, I'm not even sure I finished it, but I am pretty sure I did. All Banks novels are intricately plotted with multiple threads and characters leavened with wry humor but for some reason The Algebraist just didn't work for me.

Happily, Matter, which is one of the books in the series Banks is most well-known for (The Culture series) is very different from The Algebraist although on the surface their descriptions seem somewhat similar.

Both books feature a sophisticated, galaxy-spanning society which has an intricate, hierarchical culture and a story that centers around a single key individual. In The Algebraist this person is the annoying Fassin Taak, while in Matter this person is Prince Ferbin.

Most reviews of Matter talk about its overwhelming length (600+ pages) but for someone who is a Peter F. Hamilton fan this is really not an obstacle to enjoying the book, since we are accustomed to the 1000+ page-turners Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.

Iain M. Banks' work is reminiscent of Hamilton, with a similarly complicated plot and overly detailed combat scenes. However, Banks also includes a wickedly sharp sense of humor that he deploys to great effect as he simultaneously creates and pokes fun at typical space opera tropes such as advanced weapons technology, super-smart computers, humongous artificial living environments and bizarre aliens.

Reading Matter has convinced me to try and read the earlier works in the Culture series, like Excession (1998) and Look to Windward (2001), the immediate prequel to Matter.

Title: Matter.
Author: Iain M. Banks.
Length: 624 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date: February 10, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A+ (4.08/4.0).
PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Peter Brett's The Warded Man

Thanks to the book review blog Walker of Worlds, I have discovered some new fantasy and science-fiction authors from looking at Mark Chitty's This Year's Top Reads: Peter V. Brett, Neal Asher, Eric Brown and Alastair Reynolds.

I have actually read a fair number of books by these authors since I discovered Walker of Worlds in December 2009, but the first book I want to review for "Thursday Reviews" is The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett. As I have mentioned before, it's much easier to read books than it is to write up reviews of them!
I have a backlog of at least a dozen book reviews that are in various stages of preparation at this point, and I just finished another novel (Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself) last night!

Chitty has a similar love that I have for grand-scale, military space opera, so he is also a big fan of Peter F. Hamilton. However, he is an even bigger fan of Neal Asher who I have just begun to get into. We both are not huge fans of fantasy unless it is done really well (like Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind) so when Chitty gave Peter V. Brett's The Warded Man a 10/10 review it caught my attention.

Since Mark Chitty does such a good job of setting the scene of the book, I will quote from his review:

The world that Peter V Brett has created here is wide in scope and full of character. From the vivid descriptions of the small towns on the outskirts of the cities, where night is always a dangerous time, to the cities themselves - huge and strongly warded against the corelings - there is much to admire. These places felt real, the rundown and ruined houses always a constant reminder of what can happen when wards fail. The cities have their big, luxurious houses while the images of despair that are brought to mind when the lowly shared shelters are mentioned add to the clear distinction of class. Despite all of this and how much I enjoyed the world every time I opened the book, the characters steal the show - and quite rightly too.

We follow our three main characters - Arlen, Leesha and Rojer - from a young age. This allows us to grow with them, feel their fear and desires and aspirations. What is good about these characters is their individuality, the way each one feels completely different from the others, yet there is a strong and wilful element that will not just lie down or continue on the road expected of them.

The corelings are demons that emerge once night falls and take different forms: sand demons, wind demons, wood demons and (the most dangerous) flame demons and rock demons. They are a fantastic invention, but I did have a quibble with Brett in that I don't think he did as good a job as he could have to make it clear what the demons were. First, I thought they were intangible spirits but by the end he makes it clear that they are completely physical beings that eat, bleed and defecate but somehow are magically prevented from violating an area with a ward (a special symbol) on it. I suppose this lack of information in the reader's mind about the nature of the corelings is meant to mimic the characters' ignorance about the demons; the fact that most people have no interest in even fighting the demons or finding out anything more than how to avoid them is a key plot point. However, I found it slightly frustrating that the demons could be both described as ghostly figures that materialized from under the ground as soon as the sunlight faded and solid enough creatures that with sharp teeth and talons and ichor for blood.

The book is quite suspenseful. Mark Chitty identified the most with the main character of Arlen (and he is given the most attention by the author) but I like Leesha more and felt that Rojer was given slightly short shrift. It is clear that Arlen is the title character (it should be noted that in the United Kingdom the book was released with the title The Painted Man, which Chitty thinks is a better, less revealing title to an important plot point but I disagree. I think The Warded Man is an improved title, although either way I figured out the plot point well before its reveal in the book). His journey takes up the majority of the book and ends up in a surprising and somewhat sad conclusion.

Excellent features of the book are its very realistic depiction of life in big cities and small towns in a culture which has almost no technology and the ways that class and gender impact the lives of the characters (there is almost no depiction of race, per se although there is some discussion of ethnicity). Also, the fight scenes between characters and the demons are uniformly excellent, with the final battle to close out the book producing a pulse-racing finale.

Overall, the book is a compelling, exciting tale set in a well-depicted, realistic world that I look forward to visiting again in future work by this first-time author.

Title: The Warded Man.
Author: Peter V. Brett.
Length: 432 pages.
Publisher: Del Rey.
Date: March 10, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A+.

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A+.

My Favorite Books of the Decade 2000-2009

Thank goodness for school holidays. Thanks to this academic hiatus, I have been able to post my favorite films of the decade and my favorite television shows of the decade. Now comes my favorite books of the decade. It should be noted that these are books that were published between January 1, 2000 and December 31st, 2009 and read by me during that period. On Thursdays, I will try to regularly review either a movie or film in 2010.
Here are some capsule reviews of some of my favorite books, with full reviews accessible by clicking on the titles.

10. Fledgling. The final work from one of my favorite science-fiction authors who unfortunately died during this decade, in 2006. Octavia Butler was one of the very few African-American women to write in this genre, and she was quite successful, with her writing winning both of the highest accolades in the field, the Hugo and Nebula awards. Fledgling is Butler's re-imagining of the vampire myth, with the lead character being a genetically modified member of the Ina race, who appears to be a 13-year-old black girl but who is actually a 53-year-old creature who feeds on humans in symbiotic, mutually pleasurable relationships. As usual, Butler's work deals provocatively with issues of race, power, Author: Octavia Butler. Released: 2005.

9. Anathem. One of the most highly regarded science fiction books of 2009 gets on the list for its sheer inventiveness. Neal Stephenson is well-known for his genre-busting works such as Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon and his New York Times best-selling works of historical fiction that make up the Baroque Cycle. His books are generally huge and Anathem is no exception. This time Stephenson is playing with several different speculative fiction forms: alien first-contact, potboiler set in an insular academic/religious community, and road trip/quest. The story is told as a first-person narrative by a Fraa Erasmas who appears to be some kind of monk in an order devoted to the contemplation of mathematics and science. In fact, a slightly skewed look at mathematics and science play an integral role in the book, because Stephenson uses an encyclopedia of neologisms in the text to describe topics familiar to any college math/science major--half the fun of the book is trying to figure out what basic mathematical concept he is referring to using faux ancient terminology. The plot is a delightful romp and one is sad but satisfied when the book comes to an exciting conclusion. Author: Neal Stephenson. Released: 2009.
8. The Nine. The only work of nonfiction on my list of favorite books of the decade. Generally, I prefer fiction, and speculative fiction, at that, when I read. However, I am intensely interested in United States constitutional law, and so the Supreme Court is a hobby of mine. One of my all-time favorite books is Edward Lazarus' Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall and Future of the Modern Supreme Court. Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine is an updated version of this insiders look at the inner workings of the SCOTUS. It is an absolutely fascinating read for anyone who has ever cursed the name of Antonin Scalia. Author: Jeffrey Toobin. Released: 2007.
7. Southland. An absolutely brilliant book which combines many of my favorite things: Los Angeles, law, mystery, history, openly gay characters, and an intellectually interesting analysis of race and gender. Southland is set in three different times: the 1930s south Los Angeles, the 1965 Watts riots, and post-Rodney King uprising West Los Angeles. The main character is Jackie Ishida, a Japanese-American lesbian law student, who together with an African-American guy named James Lanier attempts to figure out why her grandfather bequeathed nearly $40,000 in cash to a black guy named Curtis Martindale that she had never heard him mention before. It is a family drama, murder-mystery and historical fiction, all tied together with excellent plotting and well-crafted writing. I wish all mystery novels were as engrossing and meaningful as Southland. Author: Nina Revoyr. Released: 2003.
6. Cloud Atlas. This book was given to me by a friend who thought I might like it without telling me anything about it. It's a perfect way to encounter David Mitchell's brilliant onion of a novel. It was only after I finished reading it that I discovered how well-regarded and highly celebrated Cloud Atlas is. There is a brilliant conceit to the novel which I do not want to reveal, but suffice it to say that whatever your favorite genre is, you will not be disappointed. (I should warn you that Cloud Atlas still gets this high a ranking in my favorite books of the decade despite the fact that there were probably 50 pages in the middle of the book that I skipped unread without any loss of enjoyment in the novel, and without substantially detracting from my overall evaluation of the book as a masterpiece.) Author: David Mitchell. Released: 2004.

5. Perdido Street Station and/or The Scar. Hello, Hollywood? Miéville writes the most imaginative and terrifying "weird fiction" (as he himself calls it) of anyone writing in speculative fiction today (that I have read). Unfortunately for Hollywood, the books are probably unadaptable even in these post-Avatar days. I discovered Perdido Street Station by looking for sci-fi/fantasy novels that had won multiple awards at AwardAnnals.com and China Miéville was the only author at the time who had two books in the Top 20 whom I had never heard of! Lots of people either hate or love his work, but I was completely blown away by both Perdido Street Station and its "sequel" The Scar. I put both books on the list of my favorites for the decade because they are both excellent and I didn't want to choose one over the other. Both books are set in the city-state of New Crobuzon on the planet of Bas-Lag, one of the most intriguing and well-imagined locales in all of speculative fiction. However, I found the third book set in New Crobuzon, Iron Council, almost unreadable. It has sat by my bedside for nearly 6 months, untouched past the third chapter. Interestingly, there are almost no characters shared between the three books except New Crobuzon itself. That, and the fertile imagination of the author, are the real attraction here. It is a place you will not soon forget. Author: China Miéville. Released: 2000 and 2002.

4. Unaccomplished Earth. When people ask me who my favorite author is, I almost always immediately reply "Jhumpa Lahiri." She writes about the immigrant experience of Bengali (South Asian) people trying to assimilate, acclimate and accomodate "American" values. Although, I am not Bengali, since I am an immigrant from the Caribbean I think the universal nature of her description of the experience of how outsiders become insiders resonates deeply with me and any other group of people who feel marginalized in this culture. Plus her prose is simply beautiful and her plotting is generally surprising and realistic. In the past decade Lahiri also released her first novel, The Namesake, which was made into a well-regarded film starring Irfan Khan and Kal Penn, but I think it is in her short stories that Lahiri gets the reader to spend just the right amount of time with her characters, instead of the extended commitment of a full novel. Accustomed Earth is her second collection of short stories, her first (in my opinion, inferior) collection, Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. Author: Jhumpa Lahiri. Released: 2008.

3. The Name of the Wind. The best fantasy novel I have ever read, and that probably includes The Lord of the Rings. What makes The Name of the Wind so compelling is that it blends multiple genres. It is a coming-of-age tale, a mystery, a orphan-makes-good story and a memoir. For good measure, it is also set in a school of magic, like the esteemed Hogwarts in the Harry Potter novels! This is just the first book in what the author calls The Kingkiller Chronicles. It is hard to imagine that the next book (The Wise Man's Fear) can live up to the first, but even if it is only half as good, it will be a remarkable achievement by this first-time author. Author: Patrick Rothfuss. Released: 2007.

2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. A heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008. A stunning melange of sci-fi/fantasy geekdom and Dominican Republic history and folklore, wrapped around an immigrant story and an impossible love story. Although this is one of the few books in my Top 10 that I have not re-read, I think it is because the memory of how shattered I was by reading the ending the first time still haunts me. Author: Junot Diaz. Date Released: 2007.

1. Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained. Although not as overwhelming as his reputation-ensuring Night's Dawn trilogy, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained (sometimes called The Commonwealth Saga) are a monumental work in their own right. I disagree with critics who think that what the author begins in the first book he fails to bring to a satisfying conclusion in the second book. In all honesty, they are really one huge masterwork which the economics of modern publishing required to be split into two parts. Clearly, the author must be enamored of the vibrant, complex, exciting universe that he created in these books because he has returned to them in his next huge work, the excellent Void Trilogy, whose first two books The Dreaming Void and The Temporal Void have been released already, to mostly ecstatic reviews. I believe that the enthusiasm with which the Void Trilogy books have been greeted with is animated by residual good feeling from those who have read and enjoyed the Commonwealth Saga. It should be noted that these new books are an interesting departure for Hamilton since they feature a well-written and engaging plot thread which is almost entirely fantasy-based instead of the military space opera hard sci-fi for which he is most well-known and appreciated. I have re-read all four books Hamilton has published this decade and can honestly say they have given me the most enjoyment of anything that I have read since 2000. Author: Peter F. Hamilton. Released: 2005 & 2006.

Honorable Mentions: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin, The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and Spin by Robert Charles Wilson.

Best Book Read This Decade (Published Before 2000): Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.

BOOK REVIEW: Jhumpa Lahiri's UNACCUSTOMED EARTH

MadProfessah's favorite writer, Jhumpa Lahiri, has had her most recent book Unaccustomed Earth listed in the New York Times list of the 10 Best Books of 2008. Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her first book (a collection of short stories titled Interpreter of Maladies) in 2000.

Her second book, The Namesake, was her first novel and was made into a well-regarded film directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn (see MadProfessah review).

I read this collection of stories last summer and am now finally getting around to writing up my review.
To do so, I re-read the first half of the collection again.

Although not packing as devastating an emotional wallop as her first collection of stories Interpreter of Maladies, this latest collection is still full of superb writing, intriguing characters and genuine insight into the human condition.

The collection begins with the story "Unaccustomed Earth" about a widowed father and adult daughter trying to connect as their lives follow increasingly elliptical orbits and both of them attempt (unsuccessfully) use an obligatory family visit to reveal a secret that they have been itching to share with the other.

After the stunning, heart-breaking first story comes "Hell-Heaven" which has very similar characters from her first novel, The Namesake: the father is a professor while the stay-at-home mother is slowly going stir-crazy and the first generation Bengali-American kids confound and disappoint their parents.

"A Choice of Accommodations" is the weakest story in the first half of the book, in my opinion. This is partly because I could not connect fully with the central character who is a married Bengali man attending a wedding of a former college crush with his wife on a rare weekend getaway together. Lahiri does excellent work of dissecting her character for the reader with clear, detailed prose--it's just that in this case the characters are a bit remotely drawn.

My favorite story of the collection is "Only Goodness" which would make an excellent Bengali remake of "Ordinary People." The story is told from the perspective of the older daughter of a Bengali couple who succeeds academically but not as well as her younger brother who goes to Princeton. But slowly we realize that all is not well with the younger brother and his "problem" becomes an unmentionable shame to the entire family with several agonizing scenes depicted with surgical precision and maximal emotional impact by Lahiri.

Part One of the collection ends with "Nobody's Business" which is a bit of a departure from Lahiri--slightly. Instead of focusing on the internal machinations and external challenges of the Bengali immigrant family assimilating in America, the general topic basically all of her writings tend to be about, this story is about a family of choice, of three housemates in Cambridge (only one of whom is Bengali) and the complications that can result when you get more information than you really want to know about the people you live with but are not related to. The central character is a Caucasian male graduate student with an unexpressed crush on the beautiful female Bengali character and Lahiri inserts the Bengali social custom of arranged marriages and the social pressure of "marrying well" as a running joke throughout the story.

The second part of the collection is three paired stories featuring Hema and Kaushik, two star-crossed lovers who also (surprise!) happen to Bengali. The first time I read the collection I felt that part of the problem with the second half is that neither Hema or Kaushik are incredibly likable characters--Lahiri is going for a nuanced portrayal which risks the emotional connection of the reader to her story. Additionally, the end of the story, which is surprisingly tragic is completely predictable. Instead of stomach-sinking dread at the inevitable conclusion one feels a sense of annoyance that Lahiri couldn't avoid the temptation of such a pat conclusion.

All in all, although Unaccustomed Earth is not as uniformly enthralling as her first novel, I do think it is, on balance, a stronger collection than Interpreter of Maladies (which is saying a lot, since that collection won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, mainly on one devastating short story) and indicates that Lahiri is growing and improving as a writer, one that I look forward to reading again and again for many years to come.

Published: April 1, 2008. Length: 352 pages (Hardcover).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A+.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A+.

BOOK REVIEW: Junot Diaz' THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO

Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an amazing first novel which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Mad Professah read the book during my trip to Italy in January 2008.

As readers of this blog may know, I follow the winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards pretty closely. These are the awards for speculative fiction, which is a great pastime of mine.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is not a science fiction or fantasy book, but it is about the people who read those kinds of books and will especially resonate more intensely with people familiar with the classics of those genres.

The story follows Oscar, a 300-plus pound Dominican "nerd" who is obsessed with science fiction and fantasy as well as unlucky in love.


However, the book also weaves in the story of Oscar's family, especially his mother and sister, and in so doing vividly depicts life on the island of Santo Domingo as well as the barrios of New Jersey. In a somewhat controversial stylistic choice, the author uses footnotes to includes fascinating historical details on the Dominican Republic as well as the liberal inclusion of several Spanish words throughout the text which he does not translate, but leaves to the reader to obtain their meaning from the context (which is usually possible). I imagine that a Spanish speaker would have an even more resonant experience with the work.

I was completely enchanted with this book. Not only is it enjoyable by people familiar with Hobbits, Star Trek, Star Wars and other science fiction tropes but I would also recommended it to people with an immigrant or bicultural background, who have enjoyed the works of Jhumpa Lahiri (whose The Namesake was one of my favoite books in 2006).


One aspect of writing reviews of book for this blog that I have noticed is that books that I really, really like often take the longest for me to sit down and complete an official review. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is definitely in that category, but it is a book I think about often even though I finished it nearly 16 months ago. And how many books (or, really works of art, period) can one say that about?

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A+.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A+.