Tag mystery

Book Review: Platinum Magic by Bruce Davis

Dusty 1 Comment

Davis Platinum 150

Platinum Magic

by Bruce Davis

 

I recently bought four small-press novels at the Tucson Festival of Books; I’ve read three of them so far, and though I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus, I have to say: I’m one for three. Two of those books are clearly self-published, because no publishing house, agent, or editor would take these books on: the writing isn’t good, the stories aren’t very good, the characters are terrible.

This one, however, is the good one.

All of those elements are, in this book, well done. The writing is quite good, the story is a lot of fun, the characters are excellent if a bit cliché. The best part of this book, actually, is the world-building: that’s often a sort of weak praise, as many authors – of all levels, professional, amateur, self-published or NYT bestsellers – specialize in the world-building more than the writing. I understand; the world-building is the fun part: you get to make stuff up, fix the problems you see in our world, add interesting things. It’s great, and a lot of authors let their imaginations run wild, usually without considering whether or not the world they create is at all realistic or plausible, or a good place to put a story – the Eragon series is a prime example of this, I think. Christopher Paolini wrote the first book when he was a teenager, and it reads like it: dragons are cool! Magic is cool! Sword-fighting is cool! And the hero (a teenaged boy – weird how that works) masters all three things in short order, and then flies off on his dragon to kick the world’s ass. Cool!

But also, lame.

Anyway, enough of other, worse books: Davis has done an excellent job with this world he’s created. He’s turned our world into a magic world – or perhaps a magic world into our world. The main characters are cops, investigating a murder case that has larger implications; and while those cops are dwarves and half-elves, and they use repeating crossbows rather than firearms, they still function like cops, in a world with precinct politics and public pressures and corruption and everything else that cops actually deal with. In some ways, this reads like a police procedural, just in a fantasy world. It reminded me quite a bit of Glen Cook’s Garret, P.I., series, in that the familiar tropes are put into an unfamiliar situation, and bring those old cliches to new life by doing so.

And just like the Cook series, this book has deep roots: there are political implications to the case these cops are investigating, and the political tensions between races and nations are built on a long history which slowly unfolds over the course of the book, just as it would in a novel with a real-world setting; that was well done. Though I will say that this element was also the source of my one complaint: though I appreciated Davis’s ability to avoid pages and pages of explication of his world’s history and politics, I was also quite confused early on in the story, as there were references made to old political alliances and upheavals that had strong implications in the story’s present, and I didn’t know what the hell the characters were talking about, which was annoying for a while. But it did all become clear in the end, so it was only a temporary annoyance.

I liked the mystery, particularly the twist Davis puts on it – no spoilers, but the perpetrators were involved with interdimensional travel and smuggling, which allowed Davis to step outside his own world, and gave a great surprise in the final conflict – and I really liked the characters, especially the main two cops, Simon Buckley and Haldron Stonebender. I thought the romance was a little too pat, a little too cliché, but it was sweetly written, nonetheless; Davis makes a nice point about love between different races which I liked. And I loved the use of orcs in this as second-class citizens, despised by the more powerful races, treated with deep suspicion and contempt by the cops, forced into ghettoes and menial labor and crime. Davis does what good fantasy should do: make a point about our world through the use of a fantasy lens that focuses our attention in a way that a more familiar setting might not be able to. He does it well, without making his allegory too on-the-nose; he just writes a good story, with some themes that should ring true even to those of us who aren’t part elven.

This book alone was worth the purchase of all four. I would definitely recommend it.

 

(The book is available here, if you’re interested; since this is the publisher, I expect the author gets the biggest return from this site’s sales.)

Book Review: Gone Girl

Dusty 1 Comment

Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn

 

I was undecided about this book. I’m not generally a mystery/thriller fan, though I have read and enjoyed several of them in the past, and this one was so popular, and so well-received, that I figured it was a good risk. I have not seen the movie, and I did not know anything about the book’s plot before I started, so I was in the perfect position to enjoy it as much as it could be enjoyed.

But I wasn’t enjoying it. The writing was quite good, and the plot was interesting; but – just like the last two books I’ve written reviews for, sadly – I did not like the characters. So I asked friends: should I continue reading this book? Is it worth it? Do the characters get better? I got a fair number of the responses you would expect from a question like that: a few people said absolutely yes, a few absolutely no; a few said “Why not?” and a few said “If you want to.” A former librarian friend said, “When in doubt, read your age: read as many pages as you have years, and then decide.”

And one friend said, “Yes. You won’t like the characters any more than you do now, but the book is worth it.” She said the characters are intentionally unlikable. She said that she believed the book will become know as a modern classic, and as an expert in literature, Gone Girl is a book I should read.

Well. She was right about the unlikable characters. (Not to be snobbish, but: based on what I have learned about fancy-pants literature as an Advanced Placement teacher, Gone Girl, like most popular fiction, will not in fact ever be considered a classic, as it isn’t complicated enough. The AP program describes their acceptable literature as those works which reward re-reading, meaning that reading the work again gives you new insights, new ideas, that you could not have grasped the first time through. And Gone Girl doesn’t have those hidden depths. Everything’s up front. Which I generally prefer, anyway, because my friend was also wrong to call me a literary expert. I’m not. I enjoyed the flattery, though.) She was also right that the book was worth putting up with the people in it, and also that the characters are intended to be unlikable.

So the basic story is about a married couple, Amy and Nick Dunne; and in the first chapter of the book, on their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy goes missing. (She’s the Gone Girl.) The question is, what happened to her? At first, you get an impression of both of these people, Amy and Nick, and one of them doesn’t come off too well. (I won’t say which one so as not to spoil it.)

But then something happens. That impression changes. You learn a few more things, and suddenly, the other one doesn’t seem too good a person, where the person you didn’t like turns out to be not that bad. That’s about where I asked about continuing, because my reaction was, The hell with both of these people.

Here’s the thing, though. That shift in allegiance for the reader: that’s Gillian Flynn’s intention. That’s the point.

The book isn’t really a mystery. There are mysterious elements, but between a third and halfway through the book, Part One ends, and when Part Two begins, the mystery is revealed. And at that point, the person you’ve been liking more turns out to be MUCH worse than the person you’ve been disliking – though that person, the not-as-bad one, is still pretty obnoxious. What the book’s really about is two things: one is the way that married couples can really destroy each other, and themselves, over the course of a marriage; and the other is the incredible way we can manipulate public opinion. Because this turns into a criminal case, related to Amy’s disappearance, and the apparent guilt is essentially worked out in the court of public opinion. It’s all about who can manipulate the public best; that is the person who will – win, I suppose, though really, you don’t want either side to win, because the entire fight is just despicable. Back to that thing I said about married couples destroying each other. It’s all ugly, it’s all bad, and nobody wins. The same for lying and manipulating appearances in order to seem more righteous: it’s all ugly. It’s all bad.

You do end up rooting for some of the characters, mostly because you want the badness to end; there are some moments of satisfying karmic justice for the ugliness. Mostly, though, my friend was right:  even though I never liked the main characters, the book was worth reading. We’re not supposed to really like them or sympathize with them: Flynn set this up to sway our allegiance back and forth, to show us, I think, that we determine our opinions too quickly on the smallest, most subjective piece of evidence; and because they are so shallow, our opinions can change completely when new information comes to light. It reminds me very much of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, a play I’ve taught dozens of times, because that play shows the Roman public for the fickle mush-heads (Props to Diamond Joe Quimby for the phrase, because the Simpsons have also done this topic) they are: first they love Caesar, then they love Brutus, then they love Mark Antony. And I have always believed that Shakespeare isn’t really talking about the Romans: he’s talking about his own audience, the English theater crowd, the ones whose favor could be won and lost in an instant. I think Gillian Flynn is doing the same thing: she’s using this book, with its masterful manipulations, to show us how wrong we generally are when we choose sides based on what we see on TV, and what we hear from the grapevine, and especially what we all “know” to be true – like how the husband always did it; or once a liar, always a liar; or that pretty people are more trustworthy.

I don’t want to think those things are true of me, too. But I’ve spent almost a thousand words now, talking about how quickly my allegiance to these characters changed: because I made snap judgments based on poor information, and never once questioned whether I should believe what I was being told. Not even when it didn’t make sense, when I had conflicting information about the same character; I never questioned whether something was credible. It was simply that the more recent piece of information had more influence on me; I tended to believe the new information was true, and therefore I should take it more to heart.

So what have we learned? I, too, like most other people, am a fickle mush-head, and I should not credit my knee-jerk opinions about public figures or controversial issues. I should think more. Gillian Flynn is a talented writer who set out to manipulate her audience into liking a character, and then hating that character, and then going back to liking the character, before drifting somewhere into a general distaste for everyone involved — including, for me, the author, who messed with me so much. We’ve learned that this is a well-done book, and people who are interested should read it. And I’m not going to read it a second time. I do not think it will reward re-reading. And I really don’t like these people.

Book Review: Darwinia

Dusty Leave a comment

Darwinia

by Robert Charles Wilson

 

For the first 100, 150 pages, I really enjoyed this book.

The concept is intriguing: in an alternate history, in 1912, the continent of Europe vanishes and is replaced by a place soon dubbed Darwinia– maybe part of another planet. Wildlands, populated by plant and animal life that bears only a slight resemblance to Earth-life. No humans; no cities. France, Germany, Austria, England, Belgium – all gone. And there are, of course, many interesting repercussions from that, but perhaps most important: no World War.

The main storyline follows an American photographer, Guildford Law, who joins an expedition into the heart of the strange new continent, looking to explore and discover what lies behind the mystery. There are some good and bad parts here, honestly; the main character is a good guy, and the other explorers on the expedition are interesting, both good and bad. The new flora and fauna are very interesting, and the political turmoil that follows on the heels of the magical disappearance of every major power at the time are definitely intriguing. I was annoyed by the photographer’s wife, who struck me as a self-centered pain in the ass, and who has her own storyline, unfortunately. But that wasn’t too bad, really, because it gave me someone to dislike while I was cheering on her husband. The expedition runs into trouble, falling afoul of bandits (who may actually have hidden motivations, and surprising allies.) and harsh conditions. Then they find this abandoned city: completely empty, apparently ancient, certainly not a human artifact. It is something different, built of enormous square blocks of stone, piled together into buildings set into a perfect grid of square angles and straight lines. Cool: a mystery! There is still another story line, with a charlatan who has somehow become possessed with an actual paranormal power: he can channel a powerful spirit, which he calls a god, and maybe he’s right. He works his way into high society, where he begins living a life of debauchery at the urging of his “god.” Meanwhile Guildford Law is trying to survive the harsh winter, trying to keep his sanity despite extremely strange dreams, and his wife is off being a pain in the ass. Everything is going well.

And then Wilson went and screwed the whole thing up. In my opinion.

There’s a twist that comes around this time, between a third of the way and half way through the book. When we find out that none of this is actually true. Not only is the missing continent of Europe explained, but so is the charlatan’s “god,” and Guildford Law’s dreams, and the mysterious abandoned city. And the explanation is crap. It’s obnoxious. Sure, it explains how the European continent could vanish overnight, and what is going on, and it sets up the rest of the book, which is a struggle between Guildford Law and others like him and a terrifying and alien enemy; but it makes the whole book meaningless. It’s as if Law suddenly found out that he’s a character in a science fiction novel by some guy named Robert Charles Wilson. It’s annoying: it feels like the kind of thing that would really amuse a stoned person – though because Wilson is clearly up on his astrophysics, it would have to be a stoned astrophysicist. Unfortunately, I am not a stoned astrophysicist, and so I prefer my novels to be set in real places, with real human characters – even if the places are invented and the characters aren’t entirely human. I can take strangeness; I can’t take the revelation that everything I’m reading is a lie.

The story goes on from there, and there are some good parts; the final battle scene in the abandoned city is great, really. And there’s a wonderful poignant moment, when innocents are killed, and your heart breaks. Good stuff. Wilson’s a good writer.

But I hated this idea. And therefore didn’t really like this book.

 

Oh — and “Darwinia” is a stupid name.