Dan
Peter Grant and the Folly are back for another adventure. This one has the usual charm and easy readability. It's a good read, but I do worry that this series is going to fall into the series trap of being spun out past its natural length (see also: John Connolly). But that's a concern for the future - in the meantime I enjoyed the heck out of this one.
The next in the ....Infinity series of anthologies edited by Jonathan Strahan. This one is themed around massive engineering projects, with a scope that ranges from the strictly Earthbound out to the rest of the solar system and then on into deep space (and time). In some ways it feels like quite an old fashioned anthology, with a fair chunk of the stories feeling like something I might have come across in Asimov's circa 1989, but in others it's more up to date - several of the stories tackle climate change head on, which wouldn't have been half as likely back then. As ever with an anthology I preferred some stories to others, so I'll highlight a few of my favourites.
‘Cold Comfort' by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty is one of those climate change stories, a near future tale of methane farming in the Arctic, helped by a great sense of place. Charlie Jane Anders' ‘Rager In Space' is probably the most fun, as Clueless-esque teen slang meets the last surviving AI. ‘Apache Charlie & The Pentagons Of Hex' is one of the stories that made me come up with the Asimov's comparison above, perhaps because that was where I first met Mr Steele. It's an easy going tale of (basically) a biker gang, but the huge alien construct they roam over is a fine idea. Probably the best story is Ken Liu's ‘Seven Birthdays'. It's certainly the most wide ranging one in the whole book, over an epic canvas of space and time.
There's a job. It's a big job. You've had it planned for years, decades. You've been labouring at it day in day out for all that time, patiently putting one brick on top of another, building bit by bit, always keeping the end goal in mind. What do you do when you've finished? I reckon you'd fancy a drink. That's what Dave does here, as Cerebus' wish from the end of Minds is granted and he finds himself back in that near tavern near the wall of Tsi.
We saw these taverns back in Women, places where single men can go and be accommodated, fed and sheltered until they see the light and are ready to become responsible members of society, get married, settle down and live quietly under Cirinist rule. Oh, and the booze is free. Unsurprisingly, they draw a certain element, and these are the people we spend the book with. There's Cerebus' old companion Bear, Prince Mick, Marty Feldman, the moptopped Harrison Starkey behind the bar, and a succession of cameos from indie comics and creators of the day - Genital Ben, Bacchus, Alec Campbell himself, Rick Veitch. It's a shame the word ‘banter' has become so devalued in recent years, because that's pretty much exactly what Guys is. A bunch of, well, guys shooting the shit in a bar, Cheers in a fascist matriarchy.. There's jokes, tall stories, arguments and drinking far too much, all impervious to the march of time and the (gloriously drawn) passing seasons. It can't last, of course. Bear's on /off relationship flips back to on, and he wanders out of the bar, hastily followed by the rest of the crowd, leaving Cerebus as sole occupant and de facto bartender. After some lonely philosophising, he receives an unexpected visitor, and then a short while later, an even more unexpected one...
Guys lacks the cosmic scale and political intrigue of the earlier books, but that's not to say there's no drama. The five bar gate game between Cerebus and Bear is as tense and exciting as any Ascension. At the same time there are laugh out loud funny moments. The Cerebus' buggid sequence is a gem, and the whole “Graphic Read” subplot had me guffawing. Yes, it's aimless but enjoyably so, nowhere more than the “remember...jobs?” riff. Living the dream!
I liked Guys a lot, more on rereading than I did first time around. It may be inconsequential, but it's a necessary breather after the high drama and revelation of the last few years. The cartooning of the characters is tremendous, Gerhard's backgrounds and sense of place are as exquisite as ever, and Dave's talent for lettering reaches new heights. There's a palpable sense of relief, of kicking back and relaxing. Cerebus (the book) will never be this funny or loose again, and that's kind of a shame.
And it has probably the greatest last line of all the phonebooks. Tell me you saw that one coming!
Reads is three stories. The one most germane to the overall storyline is the continuation of the confrontation between Cerebus, Cirin, Po and Astoria that closed out the last volume. Po is firmly in control here, keeping the other aardvarks on a firm leash as he expounds on the emptiness of power. He is humble, measured, certain and wise. His piece said, he walks out of the throne room and out of the story. The only one who takes any heed is Astoria. Her decision is beautiful, one I'm envious of. Of course, Astoria being Astoria, she can't resist one last quip. That final pause, smile, and suggestion are one of my favourite things in the whole book. And then she's gone as well, leaving Cerebus and Cirin to duke it out in an epic, gruelling, very physical, fight scene that lasts for dozens of pages. They take chunks out of each other, Cirin cuts off Cerebus' ear, both are drenched in blood. It seems clear that the fight can end in nothing but death for one of them, until - something fell - the walls of the throne room fall away, and the throne itself, with the two rival aardvarks clinging on, starts rising and accelerating away from Iest and out into space. The end. This whole section is amazingly choreographed and drawn, with Gerhard once again excelling at creating a solid three dimensional space for the characters to move around. Paired with the dialogue and four way interaction in the earlier part of the book, this is some of the best Cerebus yet. But it's only a third of the book.
There are also two long text pieces running alongside the comics action. Throughout the first half we have been privy to the misadventures of Victor Reid, a writer of “reads”, penny dreadfuls of the kind we previously saw Oscar writing about Jaka. It's a roman a clef based on the early 90s comics scene with plenty of recognisable characters. This of course means that it is hopelessly dated, but it's interesting in as much as it is a robust defence of Sim's attitude to publishing and creativity - do it yourself, maintain control, be beholden to no one. Cerebus was of course a self published work throughout its entire run, and this is basically Dave explaining why. But if that wasn't metafictional enough for you, the second text segment (I say segment, these are more like long essays), opens with a drawing of someone who looks an awful lot like Dave turning from a drawing board on which we can see the pages we've just read being created. It's time to meet Victor Davis. He wants to talk to you.
From here, we are off into something very like the Mind Games from earlier volumes. Victor Davis is talking to someone labelled “the reader”, leading them on, tricking them (I vividly remember my reaction to the 200 issue fakeout when I read it for the first time), and controlling them. It's interesting stuff, with cameos from Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore. And Davis then switches to telling the reader how (he believes) the world works, an arrangement of Lights, strong, creative, dynamic leaders, and Voids, empty leeches that feed off them and pull them down. Not so controversial in itself - I've met plenty of Voids and Lights in my own life - but Davis goes on to divide these qualities along gender lines. Women are Voids, depicted as literally eating the brains of their male partners. Unsurprisingly, this is where a large chunk of the audience got off the bus. This is the part of the series that has led to Cerebus being excoriated online and Dave Sim dismissed as a wacko nutjob (mind you, as far as Dave's unusual beliefs go, you ain't seen nothing yet), and that's before you get onto the Death vs Life spiel after the attacks on feminism. Per Bingo's comments on Women, there are points that might be interesting in here, but the presentation of the ideas is let down by hamfisted hyperbole. The writing is incredibly verbose - the Merged Permanence argument Dave spends pages and pages outlining is far better described in Cyril Connolly's famous one sentence quote about the pram in the hall. Once you wade through it, there is however much to chew on throughout this whole piece. To what degree are we supposed to equate Victor Davis with Dave Sim? The repeated refrain of “all stories are true” stacked against the way the Big Bang here is exactly the opposite of what Dave showed us at the end of Church & State? How the idea of Merged Permanence is given dramatic life in the hermaphrodite Cerebus, constantly chasing power, wealth, sex, respect but never finding satisfaction? But the burning question, of course, is is Cerebus misogynist?.
I can't answer that. I've turned it over in my head for years, and I've never definitively come down on one side of the fence or the other. Look at some of the contentious statements in Women. Victor Davis' screeds don't make for pleasant or sensible reading. And yet, and yet...in just this volume, we've seen Milieu's diligence and passion in the Victor Reid story being thwarted by a lazy indolent man too weak to stand up for himself. We've had Astoria, the prototypical modern feminist, as the most sympathetic character in this volume, the only one who can recognise wisdom when it is shared with her, and one of the few characters in the whole work who is given a satisfactory character arc (and she has a great exit). Elsewhere in the series, the relationship between the workshy parasite Rick and the artistically committed Jaka is exactly that of a Void and a Light, yet the genders are opposite to Davis' proclamations.
So, did I enjoy Reads? Pfffft. The Victor Reid section is superfluous and forgettable. The Cerebus stuff is brilliant. The Victor Davis part is alternatively intriguing and infuriating, thought provoking and ridiculous. Ultimately, Reads is what it is. To a significant proportion of that part of the public which cares about comics, it's come to define Cerebus, although of all the volumes in the series it's the one that has least to do with Cerebus the character or Cerebus the story. Reads is what you get when you turn away from the Victor Reid route. It's not edited, it's not focus grouped, it's not smoothed down or made palatable. I'm not sure if I like it, but I admire the tenacity, the unyielding vision, the individualism that forced it into being.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Crooked by Austin Grossman is a fictionalised autobiography of Richard Nixon. I should say EXTREMELY fictionalised – there is far more eldritch Lovecraftian horror here than in most political biographies. This Nixon is introduced to the fight against ancient cosmic malevolence and the magickal properties of the POTUS's seal by Eisenhower, and allies with the thousand year old Bavarian sorcerer Henry Kissinger to combat the Soviet weaponisation of occult horrors from another reality. Terrific fun, and more enjoyable than Charles Stross' similarly themed Laundry novels, but doesn't quite stick the landing.
This tries to be two books at once, a memoir cum history of late sixties / early seventies radicalism from the author's perspective, and then a book about the Grateful Dead. The two don't sit together well, not least because the Dead were never really a political act. It's a shame, as there are the seeds of two decent books here, but neither come to fruition.
Dull and dated. I didn't think much of the vaunted Kolymsky Heights either, but was tempted into this one by the lure of ancient Tibet. I was hoping for an Indiana Jones/ Man Who Would Be King kind of adventure, but I didn't get it. Think I shall be giving any further reprints of Mr Davidson's work a swerve.
A couple of shorts, some writing advice and reprinted interviews. There's a fair bit of repetition across the interviews, but considering Mr Nevill has made this available for free, it's churlish to moan. If you're already a fan, it's well worth getting hold of. If not, read one of the novels first!
It's taken me a while to get to writing this one up, maybe because it's the first volume of this reread that I've come away from with a slight feeling of disappointment. In memory it was really exciting, as the four main characters (Cerebus, Cirin, Astoria and Po) embark on individual courses that finally bring them to the great throne room, and the promise of confrontation and the Final Ascension. That does all happen, and the convergence in the final pages is expertly handled, but it's only about the final twenty per cent or so of the book. Most of the rest is taken up with lengthy dream sequences. While this fits well with the Roach's latest incarnation as a Sandman parody, such sequences have never been my favourite part of Cerebus. Of course, without the dreams we wouldn't have as many wanking jokes - the bit where dream Cirin is chastising Swoon / the Roach is laugh out loud funny - so I guess you pays your money and you takes your choice.
As befits a book called Women, the main focus characters here are Astoria and Cirin. This is where Dave really expounds on their political movements. Throughout the book there are facing text pages from each's manifesto, spelling out the Cirinist and Kevillist viewpoints on all kinds of subjects. Up to now we've seen Astoria as a very clever arch manipulator, but we've never really known what such manipulation was in aid of. It's interesting to learn in and of itself, but it also indicates just how much effort Dave had put into the building of Estarcion, and how much work lies under the surface of the story, like an iceberg of fictional history and politics.
While it's still brilliantly done (really, at this point I'm taking the fantastic art, lettering, dialogue, page construction, etc as a given, which is probably unfair), I don't think there's enough differentiation from Flight to merit it being a separate volume. The next two parts of Mothers & Daughters have very individual and distinct feel and this just doesn't. Furthermore, it doesn't do enough to advance the storyline - by the end, essentially all that's happened is that some characters already in Iest have gone somewhere else in Iest. I wouldn't be complaining if this had been substantially trimmed and rolled into Flight at the planning stage (although that would break the nice correspondence of the four volumes of M&D to the first four storylines).
So, as I say, a slight disappointment. It's in no way bad, I just don't think it sustains the achievements of the previous books as well as it could. Oh well, onwards to Reads. That'll put the cat amongst the pigeons.
The usual random observations:
Astoria's “go away” is exactly what Cerebus did to her in C&S, likewise just before an ascension. More recurrences and echoes.
I was also sure that this book had the reveal of exactly who the old woman in the cottage that Cerebus crashes into is, but I was wrong about that as well. Trust me, it's worth waiting for. A comment of hers (“Trust me, all women read minds, with very few exceptions”) also contributes to the title - I just don't think Dave could resist the idea of four consecutive spines spelling out Women Read(s) Minds(,) Guys(!).
Asta is a strong warrior and leader whose family and tribe is ripped apart when slavers make a bloody descent on their coastal settlement. Despite a public vow to recover the missing, she is soon betrayed and set on her mission in a way very different from her expectations. The book follows her as she struggles to find her nephew, accompanied by the echo of her murdered brother in her mind. The voyage takes her to many different places and she falls in with various characters for a few chapters at a time along the way. I wouldn't have minded spending more time with some of these people and places, but Asta isn't one to hang about. Her need to complete her task is the engine that drives the book, and Asta is relentless in her desire to accomplish it. This is a fast moving, incident packed novel, with a convincing picture of a preindustrial world scarred by slavery. Joanne Hall's previous novel made it onto the Gemmell Award longlist earlier this year, and David Gemmell's brand of story driven secondary world fantasy with the grit left in isn't a bad reference point for this at all. Here's to the shortlist next year!
The early pages of this one were bit of a struggle, but I'm glad I perservered. Once you click with the author's slightly florid style, it becomes an engaging and enthralling story of a young girl's experiences in a school for assassins. There's an interesting setting, kind of Roman Republic meets 17th century Venice in a city built in the corpse of a dead god. There are footnotes aplenty, and they are pleasingly sardonic. The heroine is well drawn, but here lies my main grumble with the book. I'll try to keep it vague but SPOILERS from this point on- you have been warned.
All through the book we are in Mia's head. We are privy to her thoughts, her doubts and desires. The book isn't actually written in first person, but it's an incredibly tight third person narrative with no similar insights into the interior life of any other character. About two thirds of the way through, we discover Mia has been doing something in secret in order to gain an advantage and surprise her classmates. The problem is, it's been secret from us as well. We know all about her feelings for a fellow trainee, we know the secret of what happened to her parents to spark her on this journey, we know exactly what she's thinking at almost every moment. But we don't know this, and it's jarring to have it suddenly revealed at exactly the point in the story where it becomes useful. It feels like a cheat, like the author has sacrificed the integrity of the character and the story for a brief moment of cool. It shatters the narrative spell and cheapens Mia's efforts. If it wasn't for this, Nevernight would be close to five stars. There's a lot of good stuff here, and it shouldn't be spoilt by one miscalculation. But it kind of is.
Alastair Reynolds is one of my favourite SF writers, so I was very happy to receive a copy of his new novel via NetGalley. But once I started reading it, a few things didn't quite add up. The lead characters were a pair of teenage girls just finding their way in the universe, there was a description early on of something simple like how acceleration affected gravity...hang on, this is a YA book! I wasn't best pleased with that realization, as big a fan as I was of Reynolds' adult work.
That was stupid of me.
Turns out Revenger is one of Alastair Reynolds' very best books. We're in the far far future. Civilisations have risen and fallen many times, alien interventions have been weathered, and humanity is spread amongst the stars. Sisters Arafura and Adrana have led a sheltered and privileged life on a backwater planet. That's not enough for them, and, having discovered a talent for bone reading (a mysterious tech that allows for cross space communication), they sign on with Captain Rackamore and his crew to hunt baubles, tiny worldlets that are protected and booby trapped but which can contain lost and very valuable technology inside (this idea of searching through ancient relics to subsist while hoping for a life changing score put me in mind of Gateway, which is not bad company for any SF novel). As you might have guessed from the title of the book, things go badly wrong. Arafura barely survives a bloody encounter outside one bauble, and finds herself alone, left on mission and revenge....
This is an exciting, involving and very fast moving story. Arafura's consuming need to right wrongs is at the forefront, driving her story forward with the propulsion of a supersonic jet. There are many shades of grey throughout the book. Arafura is not all good. She has to make some hard decisions and do some unpleasant things to further her goal. Come the end, even the villain is perhaps not the vicious psychopath she appeared to be initially. YA or not, it's also a very violent book, with a high body count and no flinching from blood and gore. It's never gratuitous though, just a natural extension of the dark and chaotic universe Arafura finds herself in. Space here is hostile and uncaring, and Arafura has to make herself that way to survive.
There's some lovely writing throughout, especially this passage when Arafura finds herself in space for the first time:
“...it was a hazy circle of shimmering, scintillating light, with the Old Sun at its focus, masked and gauzed by all the intervening worlds, so that the Old Sun's weary light was filtered by its passage through the skyshells of sphereworlds, the glassy windows of tubeworlds, the photon- shifting fields of baubles themselves, sometimes pushing that light from red to blue, sometimes from blue to red. And I'd go on to say the cumulative effect of all those worlds floating between us and the Old Sun was to create a constant twinkling granularity, an unending dance of glints, from ruby-red to white, from white to indigo, and an almost impossibly deep purple-blue.“
If that doesn't thrill you just a little bit, then you have no business reading science fiction. Throw in an ending that goes up and on and out in the best SF tradition, and you have an excellent book. I don't know if Reynolds intends to return to this universe or not, but I'll be first in the queue if he does.
I really enjoyed Silvia Moreno-Garcia's previous novel, Signal To Noise, so I had high expectations of this one. Once again, it is set in contemporary(ish) Mexico, but the previous book's empathetic descriptions of adolescent first love and attendant heartbreak have been replaced by something far darker. This is a world where vampires are real. In Mexico they run the drug cartels, and are violent, lawless criminals, much feared across the country. Mexico City itself is protected by walls and checkpoints. It is supposedly a vampire-free zone, but practice is far slipperier than theory....
The main viewpoint character is Domingo, a teenage street kid who supports himself by picking litter. He encounters the glamourous Atl, a vampire on the run but bent on revenge, and falls under her spell. The book charts their relationship as they struggle to escape the city and avoid the frankly nasty Nick Godoy, a vampire of a different subspecies who is obsessed with catching Atl.
There's a lot to like in this book. The sense of place is outstanding, and the atmosphere of Mexico City is very well rendered. The vampire taxonomy is interesting, with plenty of opportunity to explore further should Ms Garcia-Moreno write any more books in this milieu.
Domingo is a very sympathetic character, naive and likeable, and pleasingly upbeat despite the crappy hand life has dealt him. I did think that sometimes the reality of exactly what Atl really is was glossed over. She is by no means an out and out good guy (not least because she's not a guy at all, but you know what I mean), but looking at her through Domingo's starstruck eyes we have to put that together ourselves. That said, her transgressions are hugely overshadowed by the psychopathic sadism of Nick, the real villain. Make no mistake, this is a very violent book, but it's also a gripping noir thriller with an exciting climax in a location I don't think I've ever seen used this way before. It's a fresh and original take on the vampire genre, and well worth a read.
Strong finish to a strong series. My only dissatisfaction is around some of the character endings. I didn't like Peter, Alicia and even Amy getting various degrees of unhappy endings, while Fanning gets to live happily ever after with someone else's wife. Also found it a bit odd that the thousand year hence post viral civilisation is very very similar to our own! Nevertheless it is an exciting well told conclusion to an excellent epic.
