Alvin Ng

3.5 stars

This is the fourth book by Simon Stålenhag for me this year (which is not about reading a lot, as these are coffee-table books more full of gorgeous art than text, but an indication of my adoration of Stålenhag's work). Each is set in an alternate Sweden, where imagined experiments with radical science have left behind environmental transformation and legacies of technological contamination on the local area: derelict-yet-futuristic vehicles, altered landscapes, and hazardous sites which bend natural laws. Nevertheless, the science-fiction plays as mellow backdrop and locals interact with everything in an ordinary, day-to-day fashion. To them it seems very normal, while we readers admire how extraordinary it all is.

Experienced in sequence, Stålenhag's books started out with less story, and more as narrative flashes and descriptive glimpses which built up this alternate world from loosely connected pieces. With The Electric State, there was more of a plot, and a set of protagonists who went on a quest to reach the coast. Now with Sunset at Zero Point (which was titled “Swedish Machines” in its original Kickstarter edition), we are exclusively following the story of two young men, Linus and Valter, and their relationship over a few decades. They live in the small town called Torsvik, which is on the edge of an exclusion zone which was once contaminated by the development and testing of a major weapon known as the Tetrahedron. After the failure of that work, the area was closed off and left to be managed by the company that Valter works for as a security guard. He is very interested in the heart of this zone, known as the Black Fallow, and sneaks out with the company vehicle, equipment and brings Linus along, to explore and scavenge.

The entire book is told to us by Linus, talking to Valter (so it's an oddly second-person perspective), which was a bit strange to me at first (especially when Linus would say “you said” and quote to Valter something that he said). However, I would say that it works, especially given how close the two become over the years. Most of the first half of the story foregrounds the burgeoning romantic/sexual aspects of their relationship. However, I was a bit disappointed in how much time was spent with them (and their other “horny teenager” friends) as they goof around, attend music festivals and Halloween parties. While the expression “Dude!” was never uttered, its spirit was strongly felt for most of the early portions of the book. The context of Torsvik existing on the edge of the exclusion zone and in proximity to the Black Fallow seemed to be a very miniscule portion of the story up to that point. It got me worried that Stålenhag was trying to lean more into mundane character-based storytelling and abandoning the atmospheric science-fiction aspects he is known for, after he'd hooked his readers in. Thankfully the latter third of the book was where things kicked into gear from that perspective. Information that Valter had collected from the zone led the two boys to discover something that was (in classic Stålenhag fashion) universe-altering; but in the context of this story meaningful and significant only to the people around the phenomenon: our two protagonists. Though I had doubted him, Stålenhag manages to bring something cosmic down to the level of the personal for these two characters.

As expected, in this book, Stålenhag's accompanying art does a masterful job of drawing the reader into this universe. Unlike in previous books, where the images were not necessarily one-to-one matches with what was described in the text, this time the images serve to illustrate events and scenes from the story. However, they're almost never action shots or even key moments, often depicting instead the location or surroundings before or after the main scene occurs. On the other hand, because the text focuses on Linus and Valter's story exclusively, there are a lot of similar-looking images of the landscape that the two see on their journey into the Black Fallow and, compared to previous books, less of the diverse sci-fi elements that the zone may contain (no robots or dinosaurs or stuff like that this time). Nevertheless, these vividly painted images of an imagined reality are still very immersive and do a great job of telling the story on their own, as well as with the text.

Overall, I was very engaged and invested in this story, despite how intimate the scope of it was. I would have preferred a more expansive look at the exclusion zone and what else it had done to this region, generally a more sci-fi heavy story. Still, I really enjoyed the ending and how it tied the story of the relationship of these two boys to the phenomenon in the Black Fallow. I also really like this character-driven direction that Stålenhag is continuing to develop in his books. If this story gets picked up for adaptation as well, I think it will make a great arthouse science fiction film that I would be eager to see.

As the second (maybe third) book I have read from the Discworld series by pre-eminent fantasy humourist Terry Pratchett, I was uncertain whether I would like this story of Death taking over from Hogfather (i.e. Discworld Santa) when the holiday's iconic fat man is unavailable. My previous Discworld experience taught me that the humour would be incredibly nerdy, clever, witty and dry, and that really excited me. However, I also knew that the writing would be very dense, not that it would be hard to understand, but that there would be a lot of detail packed into each paragraph. Plus, there would be many asides and jokes mentioned in passing that would be easy to miss. That turned out definitely to be true of my experience with Hogfather. We follow a few groups of characters, but mainly Death (the skeletal, scythe-bearing spectre that severs us from this mortal coil) himself, along with Susan (a governess by day, but Death's granddaughter by night) who is manipulated into investigating the disappearance of Hogfather and why her grandfather has taken on the mantle. Additionally, we spend a lot of time with the faculty of Unseen University (Discworld's premier wizard school) who are also bothereed by the fact that their thoughts seem to be conjuring up lesser gods all over the place, and a band of mercenaries led by an assasin named Teatime (not pronounced the way it looks, if you know what's good for you) who may be involved with what's happened to Hogfather.

As you can tell from that brief synopsis (which does not do justice to all the other characters and plot threads that run through this story), there is a lot of bizarrely hilarious fun to be expected. Thankfully, I was not disappointed in that I have not laughed out loud this much while reading for a long time. Pratchett's descriptions hit the perfect tone of colourful, wry, and sarcastic. For example, one of the mercenaries was cleverly described by this quote: “He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right.” Unfortunately this kind of writing also demanded that a lot of attention and focus be paid, otherwise it became difficult to follow the plot and what was happening. Also each time one of the many (a few too many, in my opinion) quirky characters are introduced, it's not always clear who or what they are, and it takes some time to absorb. It wasn't even clear for the first half of the book what the main story arc was supposed to be. I didn't understand why we we kept cutting to Susan, or why Death was apparently pretending to be Hogfather. (Unfortunately, I know of quite a few people who gave up on this book before getting too deeply into it because they felt confused and disengaged.)

Nevertheless, by the second half, things were more focused and fell better into place (though there was still an odd chapter where the workers in a fancy restaurant cook up old boots as gourmet dishes, and I'm still not quite sure why) and the story was a bit more engaging. The final quarter had an even bigger shift in tone when, after I kind of thought the story was done, the true climax of the story took on a more mythical, primordial quality, and then (in a way that reminded me a bit of Lord of the Rings) the final final ending was actually a series of endings where we revisit each of the character groups we've seen (some of which I had forgotten) to tie things up for them. Suffice to say, this book was quite an onion.

As to whether reading Hogfather has encouraged me to dive deeper into Discworld, it definitely has. I really enjoyed meeting all these characters, who presumably recur in other volumes of the series (especially the Unseen University wizards) and the story, while being somewhat confusing, was much less confusing than The Colour of Magic (Book 1) which I read last year. The humour is right up my alley, and I really enjoy the newer Penguin audio recordings that are out there now (including the one I listened to of Hogfather). I have a few other of the Discworld favourites/classics in my library and look forward to checking them out soon.

Intimately well-written word portrait from the viewpoint of a woman, captive to a literal monster (gave me Robert Browning vibes). Her anger, bitterness, desperation are clearly expressed and it made for a provocative perspective. I had mixed feelings about the surprising-yet-predictable ending but I enjoyed this dark reimagining of Beauty and the Beast.

Any post-apocalyptic story was going to start out behind the ball for me, as I am not a fan. However, this one was written by acclaimed Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel, it's one of Barack Obama's faves, and has already been adapted for TV, so there's a lot to like even before reading it. Additionally, the apocalypse in question is a fictional “flu” that decimates the world's population and societies (this is not a spoiler, just context for the main narrative). This obviously rings relatable and hits close to home as we have all endured the COVID pandemic not long ago. Still, I think enough time has passed that a fictional analog makes a good touchstone for reflection. Ironically, if this book had focused more on the pandemic and the events that occurred after the collapse of civilization afterwards, I might have enjoyed it more than I did. Instead, the opening scene (where a fictionally famous actor dies from a heart attack as he performs King Lear on stage at Toronto's Elgin Winter Garden theatre — yes, I loved reading about locations just down the street from where I live) acts as a prelude for other interconnected pre-apocalyptic stories throughout the book. We flash back and forth through events in the life of Arthur Leander, the people in his orbit, and others connected to the events precipitating from the night of his death.

Though it's kind of artsy, the non-linear timeline of the book was more challenging than helpful. Since I expected the story of what happens after the world has ended and humanity attempts to pick itself up, I was not paying close enough attention to the pre-pandemic back-stories of incidental characters. I thought that those scenes were merely “colour” or setup for some eventual emotional payoff and that we'd be quickly shifting to the future. But between relatively short chapters, we kept jumping around in time and between different characters' lives, so that even by the end I could not tell you whether or not there was meant to be a protagonist to this book. I found this effect disengaging. If I reread the book now, I might enjoy it a lot more, and get much more from it, knowing what to expect.

The post-apocalyptic part of the book followed a traveling troupe of actors/musicians as they went from place to place performing music and plays for clusters of people. The concept is interesting. Realistically, I'm not sure that such a thing would truly exist 20 years after the end of society, but it's a great vehicle to discuss the value of art as a basic human need. Unfortunately (and again, ironically) that became less of a focus when plot elements started to get in the way. As the troupe made their way among small settlements of survivors, some familiar post-apocalyptic tropes (specifically doomsday cults and cult leaders) started to rear their heads. And though the plot became a bit more thrilling, it was easy to forget the higher-minded ideas that we had previously expected to explore.

If you're familiar with the TV series Lost, I kept thinking of that show while reading this book. With the time-jumping narratives, the character back-story focus, the crazy survival scenarios against bands of Others, they all rang a lot of bells — none of which were bad as I loved that show. (It provided plenty of great water cooler discussions in the office.) Another phenomenon from the late 90s were movies which also followed a diverse cast of characters who seemed to have no connection to each other. We follow their stories through dramatic scenes from their lives until we eventually learn how they are connected maybe by a common incident, or each character knows another character in a daisy-chain of association. I loved those movies. So, this book has so many things going for it, but it just ended up throwing me off, and while I did enjoy some of the latter parts of the story (especially one particular character named Clark) I find it difficult to understand the hype, the love, or the specialness of this book.

4.5 stars

This is the third Simon Stålenhag book I've experienced this year (and I've actually got one more on loan from the library, so another review should be coming soon). I've loved them all, but sadly, I got to these books out of order. This book should have been the first one (and I already read the sequel to this, Things From the Flood). But, that's alright, because they are not really narratives; not even non-linear ones. They are mostly a series of amazing snapshots and stories of suburban life in a sci-fi-contaminated Netherlands. Stålenhag's narrators describe brief little episodes, often of precocious school-age kids, who discover scary and wondrous things in their schoolyards, neighbours' backyards or other various places in the region where abandoned and derelict technology has influenced the environment. In this first book, we learn briefly of the particle accelerator facility nicknamed “The Loop” which operated for decades under this small Dutch town of Mälaröarna, and how it led to all kinds of technology and scientific advancements. After it was shut down and decommissioned, artifacts and well as other science-fictiony effects were left behind in a somewhat mundane way.

Specifically, there are metal spheres of various sizes abandoned in random places. According to the tales, these ecospheres may have causes a couple of twins to swap minds between their two bodies; and another kid claimed that after entering a sphere to retrieve a soccer ball, he was transported to another sphere in Nevada. As well, there are mag-lev vehicles, robots (both android types as well as larger construction “spider” robots) and even dinosaurs have apparently shown up through portals in space-time to terrorize the local ice cream trucks. Part of the charm of these books (and especially this one that started it all) is how all these sci-fi concepts are not explained with background info (though there was a segment in this book describing the made-up science behind the mag-lev vehicles used at the Loop) or with a storyline. These incredible things are all presented as neighbourhood gossip or plain ol' ordinary happenings in the ‘burbs.

The second major aspect to these books are the amazing paintings, done by Stålenhag as well. Frankly, the reason why these books are so hard to get ahold of is because they are not cheap. They are essentially coffee table books with illustrations dominating the page count. The images are painted in a realistic style, in fact they reflect a kind of sci-fi variant of “magical realism”, where a couple of young kids might be playing with a two-legged robot in a rye field (controlling it remotely with a backpack). Or that aforementioned ice cream truck is abandoned on the road while two scarysauruses are sniffing around it. The paintings are beautiful and a little melancholic, but they also slip easily into the viewer's mind so that you feel like not only can you imagine these really existing, but also that maybe you know what it's like to live there. Unfortunately, because I was only able to borrow the audiobook version from the library, I didn't have access to the images in the book (I know, why did I even bother, right?) Thankfully, Stålenhag shared almost all the images on his website, so I was able to follow along there. Plus, even though this book had more of a one-to-one correlation between the painted images and the stories in the text, the images are clearly meant only to provide quick, loose glimpses to help the reader realise this world in their minds. Not everything in the images are necessarily mentioned in the text. The images do, however, an incredible job of connecting the vibe.

That being said, the written text is also really a delight to read, with a bit of humour but also some heart. The stories are very short, but even so they describe very realistic characters (mostly a few kids) who are neither pure angels or bratty devils. But even that description from me is overstating it. There is a narrator, but there's no protagonist or overall plot to this book. In the end, this is a well imagined world depicted mostly through atmosphere and some modest storytelling. This could be considered hard sci-fi, with really out-there concepts that are familiar to sci-fi fans. But it is told in such a plain, cozy and ordinary way (both through text and imagery) that you might also find yourself wondering if it's really fiction at all. Surprisingly, I found part of my mind wondering if these scenes and the world of these books could have actually existed in the 1980s Netherlands, at least until the other part reminds me that there's no way that they could ... but then again... That's really the amazing effect of Stålenhag's unique books and the subtle kind of wonder that they convey.

P.S. I almost forgot to mention the TV series adaptation that started my obsession. Tales From the Loop was adapted by Amazon Prime Video. And while the show goes way beyond what's in the book, that quiet and moody feel and the incredible yet subtle sci-fi is absolutely there. People should definitely check out the show (it's a bit slow, but it's worth it).