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Vellum by Hal Duncan
I finished this book about a week ago and I’m still not sure what to make of it. Did I enjoy it? Yes and no. I enjoyed reading the words. Hal uses powerful prose and can put over strong images. When he wants to, he can use deft writing skills to plant just the right image in your mind’s-eye, or that’s the way it feels, anyway. So I enjoyed reading the set scenes and admired his use of prose. But the way the book is put together is ‘deliberately’ very fragmented. It is easily the most fragmented book I have ever read, even counting Catch 22. It would have taken me an enormous effort to try to fit together the various threads, and really I am only your average escapist reader, not a student of literature prepared to work to understand. So I didn’t follow much of what was happening. And I still didn’t follow it after I had finished, even though I am sure there were lots of cunning snippets towards the end which, if I’d spotted and understood them, would have knitted together some of the plot. But I didn’t, so they didn’t. On reflection, the fragmentary nature of the book gave me one other problem: I didn’t identify with any of the myriad characters. I wasn’t rooting for one (or indeed any) of the protagonists. The fly-by-night nature of the action left me with nothing to grab hold of and empathise with. So, did I enjoy it? I’m still not sure.
Legend by David Gemmell
I have read this book many times before, of course, but I picked it up again for something to read on the train trip up to Glasgow for the latest meeting of the Glasgow SF Writer’s Circle. It says something for Gemmell that I finished it on the way back. And even though I remembered much of the plot, I still found myself agonising over Rek and Virae’s apparently doomed love affair, Druss’s bull-headed determination to carry the whole of the defending army; I still marvelled at the skills of the Thirty, and gloated when Nosta Khan lost his head. Legend is nothing more than escapist fantasy fiction, with its clipped prose and violent action. But Gemmell had a secret which he exploited in all his books: no-one is completely good or completely evil. This is splendidly demonstrated in Legend, when the defending army saunter out to have a last meal with the attacking army, all of them getting drunk together as they say final farewells to Druss the legend. After the meal, the defending army returns behind its walls, and battle resumes on the next day. If you haven’t read it, you’ve missed a great book. And I recommend many of his other books too, especially Lion of Macedon.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
I have just this morning finished this book. It says somewhere in its advertising blurb that Stephenson’s writing makes all other fiction seem pale by comparison, and for once the blurb is right. Accordingly I hate Neal Stephenson with a deep and abiding hatred. If he writes books like this (and Anathem is just as good), then what point is there in anybody else bothering to write anything? From this you may gather that I think Cryptonomicon is one of the best books I have read, and it would most certainly have appeared in my More About Books post had I read it before making that post. It has a dense plot, weaving together the horrors of WW2 with plans to set up a data haven in the present time (well, late 1990s actually). It is chock full of wonderfully described characters. It is bursting with a dry humour that made me laugh out loud on several occasions. How can somebody describe horrific wartime slaughter and make you laugh at the same time? Don’t ask me: read the book. It is so good at drawing together real people and real places with imaginary characters and imaginary sub-plots that it is sometimes hard to know where reality ends and fiction takes over. Stephenson has done a pretty good job of future-proofing the technology described and used by the main nerdy characters, but in one or two places (eg talking about Windows NT, and the lack of mobile phone technology) it seems very slightly dated, and presumably that gulf will grow as time goes on. But that is the only tiny negative comment I can think of making about Cryptonomicon.
The girl who played with fire by Steig Larsson
This is the second book in a series called Millenium. I read the first (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) some months ago, and enjoyed it. At that time I learned how Stieg Larsson wrote his three books and then died before he knew that they sold some three million copies. I also enjoyed The Girl who Played with Fire. It is an accomplished thriller-cum-mystery novel. The characters are well drawn and the plot is just sufficiently complicated to keep you guessing, but not so complicated that you give up and let it all wash over you without trying to work it out. As the advertising blurb repeatedly points out, the stand-out character in this and the previous book is the quirky heroine Lisbeth Salander who… well, I won’t give away secrets here. However, I don’t subscribe to the notion that these are the best thrillers written since sliced bread. I had a few criticisms. The start of the book has quite a long section with Lisbeth Salander on holiday, but none of what happens there has any bearing on the main plot of the book. I think most of it should have been edited out. One of the main characters isn’t even introduced until half way through the book: he seems to have been created specifically to weld part of the plot together, and it doesn’t quite work for me. And at the start of the book, our heroine Lisbeth is obsessed with Fermat’s last theorem. Towards the end she appears to have solved it, but subsequent trauma at the hands of the bad guys has caused her to forget the solution. In my opinion this should also have been edited out: the idea that someone with no mathematics training could read up a few books, scribble a few lines and solve Fermat’s Last Theorem is ludicrous. Still, who am I to say? Millions of copies sold, and I have to admit that in spite of these criticisms, I still enjoyed it, and plan to get the third book in the trilogy when it comes out.
Wild card by R.Hawkey & R.Bingham
I picked this book up from the dark corners of my own bookshelves, and found rather to my surprise that I hadn’t read it before. I rather enjoyed it. It was published in about 1974 so I don’t think I’ll be giving any secrets away by summarising the plot: the United States in crisis; riots; economic instability; terrorism; different factions openly fighting on the streets; a small nuclear device exploded under the Lincoln memorial - you name it, it was happening. A presidential advisor comes up with a scheme (called Wild Card): fake a crash by an extra-terrestrial ship, which incidentally emits a lethal gas killing approximately 10,000 citizens. The idea is that the country promptly closes ranks and pulls together to defeat this external foe. Lots of scientific stuff then happens: getting the team together, creating the crash site, creating an actually working space machine out of materials not similar to Earth design, creating ‘cerebroids’ (sort of living brains) to be blown up and discovered by the crash investigators later. The team isn’t told that 10,000 people are to be killed. At the end of the book they themselves are done away with to maintain security, and so is the presidential advisor, but there is one missing informational thread which everyone has missed. End of story. It’s a bit dated. The attempts to get under the skin of some of the characters is a bit superficial by today’s standards, and of course the technology is out of date. Curiously, I found it easier to suspend my disbelief regarding the enormous scientific steps the Wild Card team managed to make in a matter of weeks than I did regarding the notion that they were kept totally isolated from the rest of the world, even to the extent that their TV was edited and piped in by hidden technicians to reflect news items several days old. I think today a lot more would go into the writing of what is basically a clever plot. More on the characters. Less on flashy psychological investigations which didn’t, in the end, mean much. More credibility on the scientific advances. It would be a much bigger book. But that said, I did enjoy reading it and the ‘high level concept’ of faking an event to make disparate forces pull together is as valid today as it ever was.
The search for Joseph Tully by William Hallahan
This is a creepy book. I remember reading it in the 1980s sometime and being seriously freaked out by it. My daughter read it some time ago, and she said it was scary. I stuffed it in my bag en route to the Glasgow SF Writer’s Circle the other day (because it’s a slim volume) and read it again. I wasn’t spooked quite so much second time around, partly because I’d read it before, and partly because I was in an analytical frame of mind and noticed one or two things. But don’t get me wrong. If you see this book in a second-hand bookshop one day (it was originally published in about 1974), snap it up. It is well worth a read. The basic plot is that a man in a block of flats slowly being demolished by contractors starts to get weird visions and believes that someone is out to kill him. His story is interposed with the story of another man who is undertaking genealogical research, trying to find descendants in the line of Joseph Tully. We understand, though it is never explicitly stated, that man #2 is looking for man #1 with the intention of killing him as a spot of revenge for some horrible events hundreds of years ago (described in a prologue). The approach is simple; the prose is clear and right on the nose. Many - in fact most - of the events described in the book are pretty prosaic, yet a heavy air of menace overhangs everything. The ending is left as a cliffhanger. The blurb says in more than one place that The Search for Joseph Tully is an example of Grand Guignol. I confess I didn’t know what that meant, so I looked it up. Apparently it means ‘Drama that emphasizes the horrifying or the macabre.’ Well, I am not sure that exactly applies, but I can see what they mean. The couple of things I noticed? There were three things, really. First, a lot of spookiness happened, but remained unexplained. For example, another character in the book also experienced the same aural manifestation as the main character (a ‘whoosh’ sound coming out of nowhere), but it is never explained why he did, or why he ended up frozen to death in a deserted building. Second, a lot of spookiness happened because there just happens to be a tarot reader and a medium in the neighbourhood, who came along to a farewell party thrown by the main character. Plus an excommunicated monk who happens to know about hypnosis. So an ominous tarot-reading and a scary seance are added to the mix, along with dire warnings from the monk and an eventual hypnosis session where ‘ surprise, surprise ‘ the original Joseph Tully appears under regression. All of this seems a little manufactured, a bit convenient to the plot. And thirdly, the genealogical research focussed on the issue of four brothers, and the second main character was able to establish fairly easily and quickly that three of them had no children. This too seems too convenient: how likely is that to happen? These second thoughts aside, The Search for Joseph Tully is a weird little gem. That reminds me, I must google William Hallahan and find out what happened to him!
In Xanadu by William Dalyrimple
On my ‘top twelve favourite books’ post I mention that my favourite non-fiction book is Lost World of the Kalahari by Laurens van der Post, and I comment there that In Xanadu had been recommended to me by an old friend as a contender. So I picked up a copy in Borders in Glasgow the other day, and set about reading it with some curiosity: my friend is not noted for heaping praise on books that he’s read. So what was the outcome? Does In Xanadu replace Lost World of the Kalahari at the top of my non-fiction list? The answer is no; but nevertheless it is a good book. It tells the story of a young man retracing the steps of Marco Polo on a shoestring budget and a fine disregard for possible dangers. Willian Dalyrimple describes the places he visits very clearly; he analyses some of his discoveries in what seems to be to be a logical fashion (but I am nothing but a casual reader); and he has a fine eye for the ridiculous, which springs to life in a host of humorous situations and conversations throughout the book. No matter that the source of the humour is a little one dimensional (almost all of it relies on foreign perceptions of Western civilisation in general and the English in particular). It still made me laugh. And I still found it fascinating to read about the places he visited (with two different girlfriends - for reasons which you’ll have to read the book to discover). Yes, I can recommend the book. It’s clever and funny, and talks about places and ways of life vastly different from those here in the UK. But Lost World of the Kalahari obstinately remains the only non-fiction book in my top twelve favourite reads.
Waylander by David Gemmell
I don’t know how many times I have read Waylander. It seems to me to be quintessential Gemmell: lots of baddies, a handful of goodies. But of course many of the baddies aren’t all that bad and in fact redeem themselves by carrying out impossibly heroic feats for the greater good of mankind. And many of the goodies aren’t really very good, either because they are expert at killing other people or because they’re only doing the right thing because it suits their personal purposes, or both. It’s a great book. Everyone disagrees with everyone else. Nobody turns out to be quite what or who you expected. About the only things you can predict when you pick up Waylander (and indeed any Gemmell book) are that you are in for a good, enjoyable read, and the forces of good will triumph over the forces of evil - eventually.
Snow crash by Neal Stephenson
I didn’t even know we had a copy of Snow Crash until I put Cryptonomicon away and saw it lying there, I imagine son #1 must have bought it at university and neglected to tell me. But Neal Stephenson is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors, so I snatched it up. Snow Crash is extraordinarily funny in some places, and just plain extraordinary in others. It was first published in 1992, when the internet was still in its infancy, so it suffers a little bit from technological creep. But not much. The plot centres round the similarities between an ancient Sumerian language and modern computer languages, and about how a hacker and a young skate-board courier find themselves up against all sorts of weird opposition in both this world and the ‘metaverse’ as they try to save the world from baddies who want to infect everyone with a language virus that effectively enslaves them. That’s a long sentence, but on the other hand it’s quite a long book, so I’m quite proud of summarising it in one sentence. I really enjoyed it. There were a handful of events which didn’t quite work for me, and I was a little frustrated at the end (I won’t say why or I’ll spoil it for future readers). But if you get the chance I urge you to read Snow Crash, if only for the brilliant Fed TP Pool Regulation on the pooling of toilet rolls.
Night watch by Terry Pratchett
I admit it. I am not a Terry Pratchett fan. I have about thirty of his books, though, sitting complacently on my shelves. Half of them were my father’s, and the other half sons 1 and 2 have bought. Everyone seems to like these books, and I’ve tried them on and off over the years. The other day I found Night Watch lying around and thought, "I’ll make an effort to enjoy this one." But I didn’t, not especially. I’m sure it’s very clever, with lots of temporal twists, humorous wordplay and characterisation, but I just didn’t feel involved. I know that nothing truly awful is going to happen, that the main characters will end up where they started, and Death will put in an appearance somewhere to talk in a funny font. But I found that I just didn’t really care.... and started skip-reading about half way through. "Hmm-mm," I thought, "more of the same," (skip), "more of the same", (skip), "yes, very clever haha, more of the same." There was nothing really to dislike about Night Watch, but I couldn’t find enough to actually like, or keep me interested. So, sorry about that, but I probably won’t bother trying another one. After all, if you find it an effort to pick up a book and try to enjoy it.... what exactly is the point?.
The wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami
This is the first of Haruki Murakami’s books that I have read, and it was something of an experience. When Ivy saw what I was reading she said,’Ha, one of those. After I’ve read one of those I have to go out and watch twenty comedy films to redress the balance.’ I can see what she means. Let me say right away that I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the quality of the writing (which is exceptional, even if it is a translation from Japanese). I enjoyed the weird and wonderful plot shifts, location shifts, and enigmatic conversations held by even more enigmatic characters. I won’t pretend I understood everything that was going on. Perhaps I could have understood more if I had tried harder but as I’ve remarked elsewhere in these reviews, I read to enjoy myself rather than work hard to try to see what the author is getting at. So I enjoyed the writing and the weird content, but ultimately this is not an uplifting book. Lots of bad things happen. The ending is typically downbeat and enigmatic, but the reader has a strong suspicion that more bad things are probably around the corner. I wonder whether all the different episodes in the book can really be tied together into a coherent whole. I wonder whether even Murakami knows that or whether, like Chandler, he hasn’t the faintest idea. No doubt somebody somewhere has written extensively on this very topic, and I could find it by googling around; but I don’t think I’ll bother. I’m happy to be left with a sense of weirdness; a sense that Japanese see the world in a very different way to me; and an admiration for Murakami’s writing skill. I see I have another Haruki Murakami book on my shelf which I didn’t know was there. I’ll have to read that in a little while, lest I become too happy.
I, the machine by Paul Fairman
I, the Machine was published in 1968. It tells the story of Lee Penway, at some unimaginable time in the future, when most of mankind lives in Midamerica, every aspect of their lives taken care of by The Machine. You can tell exactly what sort of story it is by the extract on the back cover: ‘What do you want to know?’ asked the voice in the psychobooth. ’Everything,’ Penway replied. ’Are you questioning The Machine?’ Well, of course Penway was questioning the Machine. At the start of the book he’s a relatively stable member of the ultra-pampered Midamerican society, but he ends up running around in the bowels of the Machine with the Aliens, and despite a lot of mental and robotic resistance, eventually destroying the Machine. The Aliens, by the way, aren’t genuine aliens but are humans living outside the normal parameters of the Machine. They are constantly being hunted by the Machine and most of them get killed off during the story. Here’s another quote, from quite near the end of the book: ‘Another problem presented itself. As Penway lay there holding Collette in his arms, longing for the things a man in love yearns for, he wrestled with the problem - to tell Collette what lay ahead of them, or to lead her into it in the blindness she would accept - a blindness that sprang from her own love and loyalty. Which would be best? The answer came starkly as he said, ‘Darling ‘ we are going to destroy the Machine.’’ All right, this book probably wouldn’t stand much chance of being published these days, especially as it comes in at round about 45,000 words. But it has a certain charm. It tells the story chronologically with no frills. Penway happy. Penway feeling doubts. Penway caught up in struggle, thinking Machine is good. Penway taking part in struggle, thinking Machine is bad. Penway thinks of ways to defeat the all-powerful Machine, and does just that. Problems crop up with bewildering speed, but are solved within a few pages. It’s a real roller-coaster. Further, and I suspect more by luck than judgement, I, The Machine has largely avoided becoming technologically outdated. The notion of a gigantic all-powerful machine serviced by robots is as viable to day as it was in 1968. Paul Fairman doesn’t mention computers or advanced communications at all: other novels of that age do, and consequently seem dated. So thumbs up to I, The Machine, provided you aren’t looking for anything more than a bit of escapist fun.
First blood by Jack Schaeffer
First Blood was originally written in 1954 and is only 126 pages in length. My attention span seems to be shortening - and I appear to be going back in time! Jack Schaeffer is best known, of course, for having written Shane; and to a lesser extent, for having written Monte Walsh (which in my opinion is much better, and appears in my list of favourite twelve books). But First Blood is also beautifully written. It is a little gem, and even if you don’t normally read westerns, you won’t go far wrong by giving this book a try. Here’s what it says in the cover blurb: ‘Race Krim was young Jess Harker’s idol - tough and fast with a gun. Jess’s great day came when he drove the stage out of town, with Race riding shotgun over a load of gold bullion. But the events of that stage-ride were to lead Jess, Race and lawman Tom Davisson on a trail of violence, murder and tragedy. And Jess is forced to make the toughest decision of his young life.’ Well, that about sums it up, yes sirree. The entire story only spans a few days, but Schaeffer expertly weaves together plot, action and character into a miniature classic of the western genre.
2666 by Roberto Bolano
Book reviewers and the press generally have been raving over 2666 for some time, it seems, although the book itself has not been available in the UK (in English) for very long. ‘Is all the hype justified?’ blares one reviewer, and answers its own question: ‘Absolutely’. Well, is all the hype justified? Absolutely. 2666 is an amazing novel. It breaks so many ‘good writing’ rules that if pressed to make a list of them, it would be hard to know where to begin. It is a long book, over 800 pages, and probably more than 500 pages have nothing whatever to do with the main character of the story and not much to do with the minor characters. Some sentences carry on for more than one page. Paragraphs frequently extend for several pages, and include in their murky depths speech from more than one character, and several point of view switches. The central mystery of the novel (the deaths of hundreds of women and girls in the imaginary city of Santa Teresa) remains unresolved. Half a dozen or more important characters enter stage, do their thing, and disappear without any clue as to what happened to them. On the other hand, what happened to several minor characters is described in detail. After reading that, you might be excused for thinking that 2666 is a great, sprawling mess. But it isn’t. The style works. The ‘worldview’ or ‘tangential’ style works. In only a couple of places did I find myself getting a mite tetchy, thinking ‘come on, come on, get on with it.’ Otherwise, I thought this was a brilliant book and, for the first time in a very long time, I think I have to propel it directly into my top 10 of all time.
Library of the dead by Glenn Cooper
I picked up this book at a motorway service station somewhere in between Ayr and Arbroath, and to be honest I wish now that I hadn’t. It’s not very good. The plot centres round an arcane sect of monks who write down the birth and death dates of people even before they’re born or have died. It’s not clear whether this ‘library of the dead’ includes all human beings, or a select few million. Anyway the sect died out in Elizabethan times, although its recorded dates go on until 2026. The library is discovered during the WW2 on the Isle of Wight, but the Brits decide it’s too hot to handle and transport it to the yanks, who house it at Roswell under strict security. Then one of the bright geeky workers at Roswell (not clear what they are all working at, but never mind) has the bright idea of pretending to be a serial killer, as he knows when people are going to expire. He helps to save the hide of an insurance company with the same data, and starts to live the high life. Meanwhile the gruff, flawed hero of the story is an ex serial killer profiler, who just happens to have been a college chum of the geeky pretend killer, and eventually tracks him down through a screenplay he had written using the surnames of the people he had ‘killed’. It’s all very silly and if the truth be told I never quite managed to finish it. It was clear what the ‘mystery’ was as soon as the monkish sect was introduced. The characters are stereotyped and superficially drawn. The attempt to shroud things in mystery doesn’t work very well. And the way in which the geeky pretend killer smuggles data out of Roswell verges on the absurd. I don’t recommend this book at all.