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Listening to Humble Pie... Meanwhile, the climate, she's a changin'.  Read "Vision in Silver," by Anne Bishop. 5 stars. 3rd of 4 (so far) novels about an Earth on which humans are a minority species, and creatures of magic (werewolves, vampires, elementals, etc) rule. A few things are hard to believe, even w/in this context. E.g., why does 1 little town seem to be home for fire, wind, spring, winter, etc. But the writing and characterization r so good, I don't care. Read these, in order.

122117d

If you haven't read "The call of Cthulhu for beginning readers," published by Chaosium, and if you have any shred of interest in dark fantasy, order it for yourself now. Trust me on this, you will not regret it.

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Stefanescu, Alina, 2016, Objects in Vases: Anchor and Plume, 976-0-9975449-0-9, $10, 42 p.


Mainstream poets often write obscurely, or about boring shit. Not Stefanescu. Her poems strike unerringly to the heart of humanity. She sees what is important, and tells us what one woman knows about it: children, a bizarre alien culture, love, how others see us, and so on. Everyday life, yes, but that's all there is, isn't it? Yes, all there is is exactly what you'll find in this book, or one person's piece of it. In words that say what they mean. You need Objects in Vases.

****

Review of Leiber's Lankhmar

FAFHRD AND THE GRAY MOUSER

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two friends of questionable ethics who become the most renowned rogues and swordsmen in the world of Nehwon

Author: Fritz Leiber (1910-1992)

Subgenre: Fantasy--magical world

Type of work: Stories

Time of plot: slightly before 200 B.C. at the time of "Adept's Gambit," but time runs quickly in Nehwon. By the time of "Rime Isle" more than a thousand years have passed in our world (for this story takes place when the last worshiper on Earth of the Norse gods dies or abandons them)

Location: Nehwon, a universe in a bubble

First published: Swords and Deviltry (1970; stories published 1962 to 1970), Swords Against Death (1970), Swords in the Mist (1968; stories published 1947 to 1963), Swords Against Wizardry (1968; stories published 1964 to 1968), The Swords of Lankhmar (1968; part as "Scylla's Daughter" in Fantastic, 1961), Swords and Ice Magic (1977; stories published 1973 to 1977), and The Knight and Knave of Swords (1988; stories published 1978 to 1987)

The Plot: The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series was written over a period of at least four decades as 36 short stories and one novel. The stories form a coherent whole: the adventures of two of the greatest swordsmen (and greatest rogues) any world has ever known.

Fafhrd is a tall northern barbarian, and the Mouser a small, dark man of uncertain but urban origin. They share a common attitude towards life because they are the sundered halves of an even greater hero from ages past. They meet as youths in fabled Lankhmar, most cosmopolitan of the many cities of Nehwon, and instantly become friends. (Actually, this is their second meeting, but their first "on camera.") Their friendship appears destined to last a lifetime. Thirty-four of the 37 stories in this series (the first two occur before the two meet, and the third is the tale of their meeting), chronicle their joint adventures,

which cover much of Nehwon and even part of our world. Fafhrd and the Mouser save Lankhmar many times, and the world itself more than a few, but many of their adventures are the sort that would naturally befall a pair of reckless wanderers in a world full of magic, mystery, and danger.

The two rogues have two magical patrons, neither of whom is human. Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face appear to be self-appointed protectors of Nehwon, occasionally sending the cavalry (in the form of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) to avert some catastrophe.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser encounter many women romantically over the years, and care about not a few of them deeply, but their friendship for each other always comes first. This is clearly true even in the last two books, when they make long-term attachments to two ladies of fabled Rime Isle (Fafhrd's love is Afreyt; the Mouser's is Cif).

Most stories have the typical structure of an adventure story: evil entities have designs that should be thwarted. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser discover these designs either by accident or otherwise, and oppose the villains. Not all of the villains are killed, but their nefarious plans are rendered, at best, only partially successful. A few opponents come back to fight in subsequent stories, but there is no "evil mastermind" analogous to Fu Manchu or Professor Moriarty. Death, the Power of the Shadowlands, comes closest, with the sorcerer Quarmal, Lord of Quarmall, a distant second. At series end, the two swordsmen, now middle-aged, are still firmly attached to each other and to their (then-current) lady loves. However, it is clear that they were intended to have more adventures.

Analysis: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were actually created by Harry Otto Fischer, but, with the exception of 10,000 words of "The Lords of Quarmall," Leiber wrote all of the stories.

The author's presence is felt through the somewhat archaic device of a narrator, whose comments, in the hands of a lesser writer, might have prevented total immersion within the fictional world. However, Leiber's mastery of narrative, pacing, dialogue, and character grab the reader and force him or her head-first into fog-shrouded Lankhmar, or wherever Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser's wanderings take them.

The early stories in the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series helped spawn an entire genre of fantasy stories whose protagonists are likable antiheroes. Leiber's literary influence on fantasy in this century has been exceeded only by J. R. R. Tolkien. (L. Sprague de Camp was a contemporary and mined the same vein.) Fantasy writers who appear to have been influenced strongly by Leiber include P. C. Hodgell, Michael Moorcock, and Roger Zelazny. The Thieves' World series of anthologies, edited by Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey, could never have existed had not Fritz Leiber helped invent the genre to which it belongs. Fantasy role-playing games owe their existence (in part) to this genre,a nd therefore indirectly to Leiber.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were explicitly a reaction to improbable fantasy heroes like Robert E. Howard's Conan (Leiber said as much in an author's note in The Swords of Lankhmar). Indeed, in some ways they are almost parodies. Leiber made a point in his introductions to most of the books of asserting that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were the best swordsmen in all the worlds. In what he called "Induction," at the beginning of the first book, Swords and Deviltry, Leiber even claimed that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were the two reincarnated halves of a greater hero. This cannot be taken seriously, and the idea was used in only one of the stories ("The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars," one of the latest). Even the name of the world is a joke: Nowhen backwards, an obvious reference to the famous novel Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler, but a reference evidently used only to amuse those in the know. (This is not the only such sly inversion: for instance, in The Swords of Lankhmar, Kokgnab is named as a source of subtle massage techniques.) Even the seamy-side attitude of the whole series was in part a reaction to the J. R. R. Tolkien approach to heroic fantasy (Leiber hints at this as well in The Swords of Lankhmar).

Yet there is far more to these stories than reaction to traditional fantasy literature. The novelty of the likable antihero probably contributed much to the early popularity of the series. In addition, the strongly developed protagonists gave the reader something easy to identify with. However, the continued success of these stories does not result from novelty. Leiber's story ideas were original and intriguing. He gave free rein to his imagination in inventing villains, religions, cultures, natural laws, and more. Nehwon sports a truly preposterous mythology and magic (not to mention geography), which adds to its charm. Talking skulls and killer jewels are but the tip of the iceberg. Leiber was a good enough writer

to make even the most ridiculous notion acceptable. It is this combination of writing skill, excellent story ideas, a unique and enchanting setting, and good characterization that made the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series what it is, and earned it a place among the great works of fantasy literature.

Leiber also employed (though sparingly) a trick used by many fantasy writers, of having his characters discover, or know, scientific principles not known on Earth before the scientific age. For instance, in "Stardock," the Mouser intuits why water boils at a lower temperature at high altitudes. Leiber reversed the trick in "Trapped in the Sea of Stars," having Fafhrd guess at cosmological interpretations that would be correct in our world, but are subsequently proved wrong in his.

There is another reason that the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories are so popular. Leiber peppered many of them with references to our world, such as the mysterious inter-world traveler Karl Treuherz. "Adept's Gambit" even takes place on Earth, in the eastern Mediterranean of more than 2 millennia ago. These references to things terrestrial seem incongruous and so disturb the suspension of disbelief, but at the same time they provide personal interest for the reader.

It is interesting that, in so many stories, written over about 40 years, there are so few inconsistencies. The most glaring is the unintended sex change Sheelba undergoes in "The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars." In this story he becomes and has ever been a she, yet in all earlier stories featuring Sheelba, he was definitely male.

The role of sex (as opposed to gender) is important in this series, and looms both larger and more kinky in the later stories. This is probably because the earlier stories were published at a time when sex in fantasy fiction was hardly acceptable (at least to publishers). By the time the later stories were written, many restrictions had been lifted.

Leiber received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, in no small part due to his success with the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories.

Review of Dinner at Deviant's Palace

DINNER AT DEVIANT'S PALACE

Greg Rivas, violinist and former tough guy in a bombed-out Los Angeles, comes head to head with a psychic vampire whose intended victim is Earth itself

Author: Tim Powers (1952- )

Subgenre: Science Fiction--post-holocaust

Type of work: Novel

Time of plot: More than 100 years after the holocaust; about 2100

Location: Los Angeles and environs

First published: 1985

The Plot: It is more than a century after a global thermonuclear war, and Gregorio Rivas makes his living in post-apocalypse Los Angeles as a violinist with a regular nightclub act. In his youth, Rivas had been seduced by the cult of Norton Jaybush, whose worshipers are called Jaybirds. Later, he became a redeemer, rescuing cult members for a price. He is now living on his fading reputation, and looking forward with growing fear to an impoverished middle age. Fate pulls him back into the dangerous life of a redeemer when Irwin Barrows, father of Rivas' one-time sweetheart Urania, asks Rivas to rescue Urania from the Jaybush cult. Rivas takes the job, even though it requires he pretend to join the cult himself.

Norton Jaybush is a mysterious figure whose cult members practice a devastating sacrament that literally destroys the mind if taken too many times. Jaybirds disappear into the Holy City (Irvine) and are never seen again.

Deviant's Palace is an improbable and deadly nightclub in Venice, home to many of the dregs of post-holocaust Californian society, including an astounding variety of mutants. The stories told about Deviant's Palace are too bizarre to be believed, but Rivas, who spent much of his reckless youth in Venice, has taken care to never go near the place. However, Rivas' attempt to free Urania from the Jaybush cult leads him to the Holy City, back to Venice, and, as the title indicates, to Deviant's Palace. In

the process, Rivas discovers what Norton Jaybush is, and he becomes custodian of the most deadly secret in the world.

Analysis: Dinner at Deviant's Palace is both more of the same and a significant departure for Powers. This book is more of the same, because the plot formula is very similar to that of nearly all of his other novels. The protagonist encounters a problem, struggles against it, gives himself up to drugs and denial when the going gets tough, but pulls himself together for one last try in the nick of time. The formula is acted out slightly differently in this book, because the stuporous period is over long before the book begins. Even this is reminiscent of The Drawing of the Dark; both books begin with the protagonist unwillingly revisiting his past for the sake of a woman he lost.

Despite the familiar plot, Powers breaks new ground in Dinner at Deviant's Palace. In contrast to The Drawing of the Dark (1979), The Anubis Gates (1983), On Stranger Tides (1987), and The Stress of Her Regard (1989), the adversary in this book is not supernatural. Yes, there are vampiric ghosts, zombies, monsters, and beings with superhuman powers, but all of these are explained without resort to magic. Also, the ending of Dinner at Deviant's Palace leaves important business unconsummated, whereas the other four books all end with the adventure finished, even if the protagonist does not get to live happily ever after. Powers may have felt that it was safer to end a science fiction novel on an ambiguous note because science fiction is inherently more familiar than fantasy, depending as it does on laws of nature that we all understand, and being based on an extrapolation of our own society.

The main plot device of Dinner at Deviant's Palace, the invasion of Earth by a lone being who is powerful enough to pose a serious threat to humanity, is a bit unusual but not unique (Larry Niven did it in World of Ptavvs (1986)). What makes Dinner at Deviant's Palace successful is Powers' intense prose style, and especially the careful attention to detail and consistency that characterize all of Powers' writing. Powers' writing may owe some of its intense precision to his background as a poet, for poetry is a medium that cannot afford to waste words.

Despite its science-fictional theme, Dinner at Deviant's Palace feels like Powers' fantasy novels. It has nothing in common with his earlier science fiction novel Forsake the Sky (1986). In Dinner at Deviant's

Palace Powers creates fantastic and horrible scenes that are so shockingly vivid it almost hurts to read about them. The descriptive style and underlying world view are similar to those exemplified by Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks (1979), which does not involve magic, and Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away (1978), Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber (1970) and sequels, Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds (1984), and Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East, which do involve magic. These authors share the ability to make magical, or at least fantastic, events seem inevitable within the context of the story. Only the reader (and in some cases the protagonist) is surprised when events turn bizarre.

One of the curious things about Powers' writing is that he does not seem to have grown as a writer between publication of The Drawing of the Dark in 1979, and of The Stress of Her Regard ten years later. Dinner at Deviant's Palace falls into the middle of this body of work both in years and in novels. Forsake the Sky was not published until 1986, but the writing is immature and the description uninspired. The book must have been written well before any of the others. One gets the feeling that the other five books could have been written in any order; in fact, that they are permutations of the same basic story. It is particularly surprising to see this failure to progress in a writer of such great technical skill. Also, even though Powers uses the same plot kernel in each of these five novels, he does not lack for invention. All of these books are stuffed with innovative ideas. Dinner at Deviant's Palace won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award.

Review of The Anubis Gates

                                THE ANUBIS GATES
        
        

        Brendan Doyle, a poet and historian, joins a jaunt back to the 

        eighteenth century that turns deadly...and permanent

        

        Author:  Tim Powers (1952-    )

        

        Subgenre:  Fantasy--historical

        

        Type of work:  Novel

        

        Time of plot:  1802, 1983, 1810-1846, and 1684

        

        Location:  Primarily London, also Cairo

        

        First published:  1983

        

        

        The Plot:  Professor Brendan Doyle is offered a remarkable sum to 

        give a lecture on Samuel Taylor Coleridge...and then to attend an 1810 

        lecture Coleridge gave in London!  The title refers to a set of holes 

        in spacetime, created in 1802 (though Doyle and his employer, J. 

        Cochran Darrow, don't know it) by some worshippers of Anubis; Doyle 

        and his party use one of these holes in 1983 to travel back to 1810.  

             Things start to go wrong as soon as they get to the Crown and 

        Anchor Tavern where Coleridge is supposed to speak:  they have the 

        wrong week!  Fortunately, Coleridge also had the wrong week, and so 

        he gives the lecture anyway.  As they are about to leave, Doyle is 






        kidnapped by a sinister figure.  This is Dr. Romany, head of a band of 

        gypsies, and one of two sorcerors who inadvertently created the 

        Gates in a failed attempt to return the Gods of ancient Egypt, and 

        magic itself, to their former glory.  Romany wants to know why Doyle 

        and his associates are using the Gates, and he takes Doyle to his 

        gypsy camp for torture.  Doyle escapes into the river, and ends up 

        back in London the next morning, having been rescued by onion sellers.  

             Broke and hungry, Doyle is still confident that he'll find work as 

        a writer, but he quickly finds that begging is the only employment he's 

        fit for.  Doyle doesn't know that Romany has enlisted the unsavory 

        beggar and thief guilds let by Horrabin the Clown to look for him.  

        Fortunately, the beggars he's fallen in with don't trust Romany, and 

        help Doyle hide.  Unfortunately, Romany finds him and Doyle is forced 

        to flee, barely escaping with the assistance of a young beggar named 

        Jacky and a gypsy named Damnable Richard.  Doyle is hoping to meet 

        William Ashbless, an American poet Doyle studied back in the 20th 

        century, and get some assistance, financial and otherwise.  Ashbless 

        never shows up where his biography claimed he wrote one of his 

        poems, so Doyle angrily writes the poem from memory.  On his way back 

        to his job of shoveling horse manure he hears someone whistling 

        "Yesterday," by Lennon and McCartney.  Someone else from the 20th 

        century is here in 1810!  

             Romany and Horrabin have discovered that Jacky helped Doyle 

        escape, and Horrabin catches Jacky.  They lock Jacky in an oubliette 

        in the fourth sub-basement, and eerie place that frightens even 

        Horrabin.  Jacky soon discovers why:  it is occupied by horrible 

        creatures, some of which may once have been human.  Horrabin's 

        dwarfed servant Dungy frees Jacky in exchange for a promise to help 






        him kill Horrabin, but she is attacked by some of the denizens of that 

        dark place.  She flees into a magical cave, part of the underground 

        river channel that carries Ra's Boat through the twelve hours of the 

        night.  

             Doyle finds a way, he thinks, to get back to 1983, which he is 

        still determined to do.  He meets an acquaintance from the 20th 

        century, who shoots what appears to be an ape right in front of 

        Doyle.  Actually, the creature is a cast-off body that had been 

        inhabited by Dog-Faced Joe, who is none other than Romany's former 

        partner, possessed by the demented ghost of Anubis and cursed by 

        Anubis with ever-growing fur.  Joe uses magic to trade bodies when 

        the fur gets ahead of the razor, and poisons the bodies he leaves 

        behind so they can't tell tales.  Joe tries the trick on Doyle, but the 

        latter is more sophisticated than Joe's usual victims, and he eats 

        charcoal, which is the antidote for the strychnine Joe ate before 

        trading bodies.  

             

        

        Analysis:  This is, in my opinion, Powers' finest novel to date.  Its 

        fast pacing, one of Powers' hallmarks, never lets up from beginning to 

        end, and marvel is piled on plot twist right up to the last page.  

        Some highlights are further insights into the nature of magic that 

        was first outlined in The Drawing of the Dark, a truly enchanting form 

        of limited time travel, and one of the most bizarre underworlds ever 

        penned.  Powers' theory of magic includes some very engaging twists 

        on old myths.  For instance, the power of a mage's real name 

        presumably derives from its reflection of his inner being.  Thus, when 

        a sorceror undergoes a major personality change, his true name 






        changes as well.  A common theme in Powers' fantasies, as in many 

        fantasies (e.g., Niven's The Magic Goes Away) is the gradual fading of 

        magic.  In Powers' schema, magic fades before the bright light of 

        Christianity.  As the last strongholds of magic-working religions are 

        overwhelmed during the 19th century, magic gradually vanishes.  As 

        part of this process, the universe is actually transformed from a 

        magical world to a scientific one.  For instance, up until 1810, the 

        sun was actually carried by Ra underground in a fabulous boat.  

        However, by the end of the story, the underground channel has 

        hardened into rock, and the sun has become the giant ball of burning 

        gas that it is today.  This is a delightful way to work the paradigm 

        shift, and it is most clearly expressed in this book, although the 

        same basic magical explanation is used in The Drawing of the Dark and 

        On Stranger Tides.  A similar theory underlies the magic in The Stress 

        of her Regard, but in Powers' sixth novel, Last Call, he uses a 

        different paradigm involving the tarot and non-fading magic.  

        

             Interestingly, the name assumed by Doyle, William Ashbless, is 

        that of a poet invented by Powers some years before he wrote The 

        Anubis Gates.  Because the book is about Powers' imaginary poet, it is 

        tempting to suppose that more effort went into writing this one.  

        Certainly Powers brought the grotesque simile, another of his 

        trademarks, to fantastic heights in this book.  "...his blank smile 

        returning to his face like something dead floating to the surface of a 

        pond."  

        

             The plot formula of The Anubis Gates is very similar to that of 

        nearly all of his other novels.  The protagonist encounters a problem, 






        struggles against it, gives himself up to drugs and denial when the 

        going gets tough, but pulls himself together for one last try in the 

        nick of time.  As in all of Powers' novels the protagonist has a lost 

        love; in this book, as in Last Call, the lost love is a dead wife.  

        

             One of the interesting facets of this book is the treatment of 

        immortality.  The Master of Romanelli and Fikee is more than 4,300 

        years old -- and senile.  His two servants, millennia old themselves, 

        continue trudging through the same ruts they seemed to have occupied 

        since they reached adulthood.  Extended life does not bring enhanced 

        wisdom, and one is compelled to pity the doomed sorcerors even while 

        loathing them.  J. Cochran Darrow, the wealthy sponsor of the time 

        trip, has personal immortality as his ultimate goal.  This obsession 

        destroys him in the end, and we are able to pity him too.  

        

             A sinking-ship metaphor appears several times early in the book; 

        in connection with the Egyptian sorcerors and with Darrow; a 

        foreshadowing of their eventual failure to achieve their aims.  This 

        is linked to William Ashbless by a "quote" from his poetry at the 

        beginning of the book, and to the higher workings of magic by Ra's 

        Boat of Millions of Years.  

        

   

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Book Review

Magic Burns, Ilona Andrews, Kate Daniels #2

I have read two of these now, and will definitely read the rest. I'm strongly reminded of Kim Harrison's Hollows books. Kate Daniels is strong, clever, alluring, prone to making major mistakes, and her past and abilities are mysterious. In this book, she rescues a (possible) orphan from forces out of legend that threaten her city and world. As waves of magic sweep Atlanta, building to a crescendo of deadly potentiality, she battles enemies like none she's ever seen. Creatures out of Irish legend manifest on both sides of the struggle. Meanwhile, monsters familiar and otherwise continue to be attracted to her. It takes more than a stick to fend these guys off.

4 stars

Children's literature and weird fiction: a marriage made in…

The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers

By H.P. Lovecraft, translated (if that's the word)and illustrated by R. J. Ivankovic

What Dread Zeppelin does for Led Zeppelin, Elvis, and reggae, this book does for H.P. Lovecraft and Dr. Seuss. This book could not exist without H.P. Lovecraft's iconic story, but it is actually better than the original story. Ivankovic has transformed Lovecraft's tale of horror into an eerily perfect imitation of Dr. Seuss' instantly recognizable illustrations and verse. Even the size and shape of the book are perfect for a Dr. Seuss book. I said perfect before, but this book, more than a decade in the making, could not be a better marriage of these two artists. The only defects, if it is a defect, is that the book will be incredibly funny to anyone who has read the original story. I think small children will enjoy it a lot, but just imagine what they will think when they, later in life, read Lovecraft's story. Well, order this book now. If you like weird fiction and have read The Call of Cthulhu, you owe it to yourself to buy this book. And if you know a child into the weird, scary, and peculiar, you will be the world's greatest uncle/aunt/friend if you buy them this book.

And if you have not listened to Dread Zeppelin, it is not too late. Do it now!

Publisher: Chaosium, hardback, $20

http://www.chaosium.com/hpls-call-of-cthulhu-for-beginning-readers/ 

Addendum: you know how sometimes you buy something and when you get it you think "oh. I thought it would be cooler."? Well, rest assured, The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers is not going to do that to you. What I thought when I opened it was "oh my God, it looks even more exactly like a real Dr. Seuss book than I thought it would!" And I started thinking of who I know needs a copy.

Review of The Sea of Time

The Sea of Time

P.C. Hodgell

review

This book is about strange people in a strange world. Magic works. Many kinds of magic. Time and space can change without warning, yet somehow ordinary people manage to survive. The viewpoint character is no ordinary person, though. Jame is honorable, hard-working, a fighter, peculiar and dangerous, and literally not of this world (the world of the story; of course she is not of our world). Her people are peculiar and dangerous, too, but when they come up against her, bad things tend to happen to them.

I have been reading this series since the first book was published in 1982 and it has certainly been a long strange trip. My wife and I have started to beg all of the powers that might be to keep PC Hodgell alive long enough to finish the series. The way things are going, that will be at least three or four more books and several decades. But is that too much to ask? I think when the next book comes out. I will treat myself to the almost unendurable pleasure of rereading the entire series from the beginning. You should do that now.

Review of Rudy Rucker's Frek and the Elixir

YA protag, no humanoid sex, mind-blowing science & plot


RR makes you think you understand cosmology: the kids in the story do! From an author famous for inventive worlds, here's one for YA. A far future in which Earth's ecology is severely truncated, aliens want to ride humans like avatars, and Frek is just trying to keep Gov off his back, rescue Earth, and protect his mom and sisters. Which aliens are the good guys? Can he get to the root of Earth's problems and solve them? Avoid getting too big or too small for his britches? All this and more, much more.

I loved the book

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The Armies of Memory

John Barnes
 

This book is the fourth part of a series of four, and I have not read the first three. I don't really recommend reading series this way, but sometimes the problems created are bigger than other times. In this case, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and will look for the first three to read in order.

This is a far future high tech world in which AIs are commonplace, widely mistrusted, and few people die the real death. Archiving copies of your mind is routine, so most people can be resurrected after fatal events. There are aliens, at least some of which are not friendly ones, and AI, some of which might be friendly, and plenty of ordinary humans, some of which definitely are not. The viewpoint character is a singer and songwriter who is also a highly skilled secret agent. Someone is trying to kill him.

There is lots of intrigue, action, and personal moments too. Skilled writing and intriguing worlds are big pluses. Read it.

Book Review Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet


This book, about a crew of misfits on an independent starship, could easily have fallen victim to that trope. However, Chambers' characterization and writing handily overcame that obstacle. I particularly like the way she handles alien cultures and alien individuals. They are realistic and don't seem like painted humans.She has invented four or five distinct alien species and really made them seem real. She has also created distinctly different individuals of some of these species. This is a rare and wonderful feat. "Angry Planet" is not like too many SF movies and TV shows, where aliens are introduced at the beginning, but then it's humans all the way down.

This is the first book in the series, so there is a lot about the characters getting to know each other as well as some personal growth for several of them. That is all done well and seems natural. The funny techie who is, most of the time, a very silly person could easily have become a caricature of herself. Instead, she comes across like a real person of this kind, someone you've known and liked.

The mission, to do a dangerous job in an even more dangerous war zone, is the backbone of the plot. However many things happen along the way and the book stays interesting from beginning to end. If you are prone to pulling all nighters while finishing novels, make a pot of coffee before you get to the middle of this book.

We will probably buy the sequel soon and, even though we are trying to downsize, will not give away this book. We both will need to read it again.

You Only Die Once

Beaton, MC, 2017, Death Of A Ghost: GrandCentralpublishing.com, ISBN hardback 978-1-4555-5830-8, e-book 978-1-4555-5828-5, audiobook 978-1-4789-0248-5, US $26, $13.99, $32.48 respectively.

The title kind of gives it away. There wouldn't be a ghostly death in this book. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth mystery series doesn't have a whiff of the supernatural in it, unless you count "Highland telepathy," which is actually a form of intuition.

The latest installment about the unambitious and easy-going Highland detective is as entertaining as ever. The village of Lochdubh is lucky to have the smartest detective in Scotland. Following the twists of this plot is like trying to wrestle an alligator (without the possibility of being eaten). If it wasn't for Macbeth, it's very likely that no crime would ever be solved in the Highlands. Yet he stays in his quaint tiny village, taking his dogs with him almost everywhere, fishing and loafing whenever possible, and keeping his head down. This is not easy, given the crowd of busybodies and disreputable characters surrounding him, and the screwups at the police station in the "big city" of Strathbane.

The titles of these books follow a very strict formula. However, the stories themselves are quite inventive. In this case, a disappearing ghost is replaced by a dead professor, convincing evidence of recent smuggling activity, and more deaths. Not to mention attempted murders. The book is a page turner. Even right before the end you still don't know how everything is going to come out. Spoiler alert: Macbeth is still alive on the last page.

One nice thing about this series is that Macbeth actually has a life. Things happen to him, romantically and in other ways, that have consequences. If you want to observe the unfolding of his life, it would be best to start at the beginning of the series. However, the murder mysteries themselves are completely independent of one another and you can jump right in with Death of a Ghost and enjoy it thoroughly. I also like how comfortable the author is with Highland life. Things are not explained for an American audience, but it is not difficult to pick up on slang and culture from context. One last thing. If you buy this book and like it, there are 31 more that you can be sure you will like as well. And they are still coming out regularly. A good and prolific author is a treasure.

Out in February, 2017.

2 new book reviews

Christopher, Adam, 2012, Empire State, Angry Robot books, ISBN 978-0-85766-193-7.

The Empire State is an alternate New York City. It is a lot like New York, with superheroes, and without the rest of the world, and the story all takes place during Prohibition. Oh, and the people who live there think it's the entire world. Everything is gritty, dark, but kind of cool, at least until detective Rad Bradley discovers a deadly secret.

I really loved this book. The writing is great, and the complicated plot unfolds with the inevitability of sunset. Things start strange and get weirder, more frightening, and also more and more fun. Fun, that is, until Bradley, and the readers, start to see what is coming down the pike. Soon, you can’t put it down.

If you like science fiction, fantasy, and murder mysteries rolled into one, you really should read this book. PS: this is part of a series, but stands alone.

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Cotterill, Colin, 2016, I Shot the Buddha, Soho press, ISBN 978-1-61695-722-3.

This is the latest offering in a wonderful series about retired coroner Siri Paiboun. Paiboun lives a sometimes precarious existence in Laos with his wife Mme. Daeng. I have to admit that I don't know how accurate the book's portrayal of life in Laos is, but it feels authentic.

This is a murder mystery, set in a world in which magic most definitely works. Most people in the story don't believe in it, but it's real, and the protagonist is in it up to his eyeballs.

Paiboun and his wife have never been able to turn away strays and other misfits looking for a home. One day, a Buddhist monk they have taken under their wing rides out on his bicycle and never returns. Paiboun goes looking for him. Paiboun is dogged and smart, but between government agents and supernatural beings, not to mention just plain crooks, he's going to need all of his skills and wit stay alive, much less to find out what happened to the missing monk.

I could not help getting deeply involved with the characters and it was hard to put the book down. I recommend it to anybody who likes murder mysteries, especially if you like stories about magic. One of the best things about this book is that, if you fall in love with it, there are a lot more waiting for you. I have read two books in the series now, and I plan to find the rest of them soon.

The Book of Answers (Herb Kauderer): Reprinted review--this book is up for the Elgin this year

Review

Kauderer, Herb, 2014, The Book of Answers: a book of answer poems, written image, Lancaster, New York, wrttnimage@aol.com, ISBN 0-9715712-4-4; ISBN 978-0-9715712-4-2. Limited edition of 100 copies, saddle stitched with a card stock cover, 44 p. Author email: hkauderer@yahoo.com. $8.

Herb Kauderer started submitting short poems to my magazine, Dreams and Nightmares a long time ago, I think back in the mid-1980s. Most of the poems I regarded as mainstream, not speculative, but I published some over the years. Then we lost track of each other and quite recently he sent me a copy of his new book, The Book of Answers. Answer poems are responses to other poems or bodies of poetic work and it is a well-established kind of poem. Many of these poems are responses to mainstream poems, but Herb is the kind of guy who can stitch back and forth across that seam between speculative poetry and the more widely respected kind with an easy grace. So, in between responses to poems by William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and Edna St. Vincent Millet, are responses to John Grey, David Livingstone Clink, Carolyn Clink, Mary Turzillo, Geoff Landis, me, and more.

As I understand them, answer poems are supposed to use tools employed by other poets to respond to the content of one or more of their poems. Or some approximation thereof.

"persistence" (haiku for John Grey)

thirsty bones bleached pale

protrude from the desert floor

still seeking water

This poem does not actually bring to mind the style of the kind of poems by John Grey with which I am most familiar. On the other hand, the content does seem to echo John Grey's proclivities rather strongly. And I do like the poem.

After "Signs You're in Trouble" (for Mary Turzillo) is a list poem and includes these lines:

6) The DVR has somehow become filled with home movies of your childhood.

7) You do not appear in any of the home movies.

8) Your child plays on an imaginary computer & prefers it to you.

This poem works for me as an answer to Mary Turzillo's poetry. I have a weakness for lists poems, and I think this is a very entertaining one. I especially like the imaginary computer. I made quite a few of those when I was young, using paper and pencil. This poem fulfills all the requirements of answer poetry, probably the most important of which is that the poem stand on its own.

In the opposite of entropy (for Carolyn Clink), Kauderer again brings it all together:

perception

& the persistence of vision

impose patterns

on chaos

This looks like a Clink poem, at least to me. But it highlights the main point of answer poems: they have a lot more impact if the reader is familiar with the source. In general, I am not. So the secondary goal of anyone writing an answer poem is that it be a good poem on its own. You should be able to enjoy it even if you don't know anything about the writing of the person whose work is being answered. Being unfamiliar with many of the source poems, I am well-suited to evaluate that aspect of this chapbook. For me, most of these poems work well as poems, and not just as answers. The answers to speculative poems are themselves speculative, so this collection also works as a speculative poetry collection. Roughly half of the poems are speculative.

Reviews of Footprints in Stone

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/44885

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/footprints-in-stone-ronald-j-buta-phd/1123112917 and a low price on the Nook version

https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.titles.epl?tquery=Paleontology -- a short review

2 reviews on Amazon


If you read the book, please review it.


Barnes & Noble in Tuscaloosa has signed copies.

A new book review

Ganzglass, Martin R., 2016, Blood Upon the Snow, A novel of the American Revolution, Peace Corps Writers, ISBN 978-1-935925-72-9, perfect bound paperback, 344 pages, www.peacecorpsworldwide.com

There's no doubt in my mind that Blood Upon the Snow could have been sold to a commercial publisher. The quality of writing and the plotting are both superlative. The writing is descriptive, but also personal, when Ganzglass gets inside the heads of the characters. Of course the details of the Revolutionary war are well known, but it is no mean feat to weave real and imagined characters together to tell a gripping story, as the author has done with Blood Upon the Snow. This is the third in a series of four novels about the Revolutionary War. The primary viewpoint character is Will Stoner, a corporal when the book opens and later a sergeant in the American artillery. He and a few other characters are imaginary, but almost nothing else is. This novel sticks to the facts, but that's not all it does. Ganzglass has a gift for turning what could've been a dry, factual account of the war into a riveting story of personal travails and successes that is also a factual account of the war.

Ganzglass skillfully uses the technique, familiar from fat bestsellers, of switching from one viewpoint to another to give the reader a more full and sympathetic understanding of what all of the major actors are up to. These characters include a Hessian soldier, an American traitor working with the British, one of the famous rifleman who fought with devastating accuracy against the British and Hessians (armed with more primitive weapons), and Elizabeth, the woman Will has been courting since part way through the first book.

The story begins with the taking of Trenton, in which the rebels recapture the city from the British and their Hessian allies, at the end of 1776. A lot of the book concerns the battles in which Ganzglass's protagonist participates, because he is, after all, a soldier. The struggle between the British and Hessians and revolutionaries, between the armies that want to stand and fight versus those that can't afford to, is a matter of historical record. However, Ganzglass's descriptions of these battles bring them to life like no American history book that I was forced to read in school. I would have enjoyed the textbooks a lot more if they were written like this! There is also a lot about daily life, both urban and rural. I particularly liked the raising of a bridge and the building of a mill entirely by hand. The descriptions were very clear, and fascinating.

During the course of this novel, Will is reunited, briefly, with Elizabeth, the object of his long-distance affections. Because they don't get to spend much time together, their romance progresses slowly, but it does progress. In the latter part of Blood Upon the Snow, Will overwinters with General Washington's army at Valley Forge, and that's where we leave him, anticipating spring.

I highly recommend this book. You don't have to be particularly interested in Revolutionary War history to enjoy it. It is more novel than history, despite the author's care to avoid factual errors. I have one quibble. The book could have used careful copy editing. This is obviously something that the Peace Corps press does not provide. It's a shame, because typos and other small errors can disrupt the flow of the narrative. I hope the author takes it upon himself to get his next book edited on his own.

end

A new book for teachers about earth science of the southeastern US

Swaby, Andrielle N., Lucas, Mark D., and, Ross, Robert M., eds., 2016, The teacher-friendly guide to the earth science of the southeastern US, 2nd edition, Paleontological Research Institution (www.priweb.org), 460 p. ISBN 978-0-87710-512-1. Perfect-bound paperback, $35.

This book contains chapters on geologic history, rocks, fossils, topography, mineral resources, energy, soils, climate, earth hazards, and fieldwork. 14 authors contributed to the book, of whom only four actually live and work in the Southeast. However, many of the rest are well known earth-science education specialists.

I am not reviewing this book at the moment (I might do it another time), but I am very familiar with the writing of several authors who helped create this volume. I am sure it is a valuable resource for teachers who are not already familiar with the subject.

Because this is a fairly thick paperback, I suspect it will start to come apart after only a modest
amount of use. As far as I know there is not a hardback edition.

Review of a mystery novel

Review of

Beaton, M. C., 2016, Death of a Nurse, a Hamish MacBeth mystery, Grand Central publishing, $25 hb, ISBN 978-1-4555-5825-4, 256 p.

Death of a Nurse is the 32^nd in a series of murder mysteries set in the Scottish highlands. I was sent a review copy and enjoyed the book so much that I decided to review it. Even though it isn't SF. Then I mislaid the book, and before I relocated it, got another copy in the mail. Pinned by the fickle finger of fate!

Death of a Nurse is about a policeman in a small town in Scotland. Everybody knows everybody, and yet life (and death) is surprisingly complicated, and full of complicated surprises. Hamish Macbeth has a date with a hot young nurse who takes care of a cranky old man. She shows up late for their date ... a few days late, and unexpectedly dead. Macbeth attempts to find out what happened, but lies and half-truths lead him into a morass of possible guilty parties with varied motives. These include the old man, others in his household, other officers of the law, and plenty more.

I liked the smoothly believable plotting, the well-fleshed out and realistic characters, Hamish (I always prefer books in which I like the protagonist), and the denouement. Of course I liked the writing, too. What didn't I like? Death of a Nurse was a bit more serious than my ideal mystery. If you like murder mysteries, you should read this book. Perhaps you'll want to start with the first in the series (available for less than $7, including shipping), though I had no problem jumping in at number 32.

My favorite new author

New to me, anyway. Ben Aaronovitch, "Rivers of London," first in a series. The Thames has a queen; tributaries have princesses. London has ghosts, vampires, monsters. Two cops are all the Met can spare to deal with everything supernatural. They have a lot of trouble coming. Reminds me of Tim Powers, of Neil Gaiman, & a bit of Kim Harrison. There are apparently already 6 sequels, so if this strikes you as it does me, you are in luck. If you like dark fantasy, you owe it to yourself to read this book.