Title:Dust

Author: Joan Frances Turner

Genre: Horror, Zombies, Post-Apocalyptic, Speculative Fiction

Publisher: Ace
Publication date: September 7 2010
Hardcover: 384 pages

Nine years ago, Jessie had a family. Now, she has a gang.

Nine years ago, Jessie was a vegetarian. Now, she eats very fresh meat.

Nine years ago, Jessie was in a car crash and died. Nine years ago, Jessie was human.

Now, she’s not.

After she was buried, Jessie awoke and tore through the earth to arise, reborn, as a zombie. Jessie’s gang is the Fly-by-Nights. She loves the ancient, skeletal Florian and his memories of time gone by. She’s in love with Joe, a maggot-infested corpse. They fight, hunt, dance together as one—something humans can never understand. There are dark places humans have learned to avoid, lest they run into the zombie gangs.

But now, Jessie and the Fly-by-Nights have seen new creatures in the woods—things not human and not zombie. A strange new illness has flamed up out of nowhere, causing the undeads to become more alive and the living to exist on the brink of death. As bits and pieces of the truth fall around Jessie, like the flesh off her bones, she’ll have to choose between looking away or staring down the madness—and hanging onto everything she has come to know as life.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

How did we get this book: Review copies from the publisher

Why did we read this book: Thea loves zombies and Ana has a new found appreciation for the creatures. When we first heard about the book, we both went: WANT.

Review:

First Impressions:

Thea: According to the marketing promo behind Dust, the novel promises to be…different than the average zombie novel. It promises to tell the story of life after death, from the walking dead’s perspective. It promises to make readers question what they know about life and death, through the eyes of a not-so-young heroine, named Jessie. These are a whole lotta promises for a debut novel to deliver, but deliver Dust certainly does. It’s a haunting, elegiac portrait of life after death, of relationships and emotions from the perspective of a character that is no longer human, but not a monster either. Dust is one of those books that gets better the more that I reflect upon it. I loved it. (And, I think that you should listen to me and not Ana, because she is wrong and I am right, and that is all there is to it.)

Ana: I had very much the opposite reaction to the book – the more I reflect upon it, the less I like it. It starts well enough but half way through the book, it loses its steam. The marketing promo, the blurb, the cover of my ARC (a letter from the marketing department) all tell me how different the book is going to be and I think that ultimately it does not deliver on its promise. I think that story-wise it doesn’t work that well and the basic themes of life and death and being human x being a zombie, were extremely heavy-handed. I didn’t like it.

On the plot:

Thea: Dust is the story of Jessie, or Jessica Anne Porter that was, a girl that was fifteen when she was killed in a car accident only to rise days later as a zombie. Fighting her way out of her cement sealed grave under six feet of dirt, Jessie finds refuge of a kind with a gang of other undead, that call themselves the Fly-By-Nights. After taking their brutal initiation of beating, breaking her bones and causing her to retch up a dark mixture of fetid, congealed blood (“Coffin Liquor,” as the zombies call it), Jessie becomes an official member of the gang, and she finally feels at home. Roaming the forest together for deer, possum and other wild prey, Jessie is respected by her fellow gang members as a fighter – even one-armed, as the book opens with Jessie finally losing her right appendage, Jessie is perhaps the fiercest fighter of the group. But then, something strange disturbs Jessie’s comfortable routine. First, there’s the strange blonde “hoo” (zombie slang for human) that stumbles into their woods, so far from the protections of civilization. Disoriented, sweating a strange, non-human, chemical smell, the girl seems like something caught between living and dead – not quite hoo, but not quite zombie either. Then, gang leader Teresa starts acting strangely, smelling eerily like the not-hoo girl from the woods. Something frightening is happening to the undead and living alike, and not a soul will be left untouched.

Well, what can I say about Dust? It is a haunting story that lingers with you long after finishing the novel. It is deeply unsettling, unique, and beautifully written. It is a story that is, more than anything else (and contrary to what Ana will tell you about romance or whatever) about people that have lived, died, and been born again in a cold, cruel world. Yes, they are flesh-hungry, but they aren’t “monsters” – at least, not any more than humans are monsters. From a plotting perspective, Dust is a quiet novel, a loving macabre ode to sinew and blood, of decay and the maggots and blowflies that feed upon the flesh of the dead. But instead of being gratuitous or overly gory for the sake of being gory, Dust is in actuality a beautiful, melancholy book – Ms. Turner manages to make the sight of dusty, parchment-thin skin beautiful, the warm blood and entrails of a fresh kill vibrant and delectable. Dust isn’t a book that aims to shock and disgust; rather, it simply is an honest recording of the life of Jessie and her gang.

Dust also is a mystery of sorts, and a book of discovery and reconciliation. There is the question of the cause and nature of the strange new infection that sweeps the forest, a biological mystery that unfolds beautifully and gradually over the course of the novel. The cause of the apocalyptic bacteria is insignificant though, really, as the more important, underlying theme is not on the macro but micro level – personal guilt, family loyalty and perceived betrayal. Though the idea of the microbe unleashed by humanity ultimately leading to the species’ demise is nothing new, Ms. Turner handles this aspect of the novel beautifully, creating a tempered, well-paced tale that I devoured whole in essentially a few short hours.

On the more technical, zombie-fan sort of stuff, I must say that I loved Ms. Turner’s take on the life cycle of the zombie, as I did the newly imagined method that they communicate with each other, although I will say that certain aspects felt underdeveloped (the strange, literal “danse macabre” and the way they hear thoughts in terms of music – or perhaps only Jessie does this?). Still, I loved their new, superior neuron-firing capable brains, and most of all, their perceived “superiority” to the idiot, stinking hoos. They aren’t superior of course – this is the beauty of Dust, with its flawed characters, laying bare the faults of both humanity and zombie, the difference between the two not so dramatic as one might suspect. I loved that the book doesn’t feel the need to explain everything explicitly, that Ms. Turner makes some unorthodox choices towards the end of the novel, too. And, contrary to the notion that Dust is romantic or some sort of cautionary tale, I will say that, in my opinion, this misses the point of the book. In my opinion, I didn’t find this book romantic at all (certainly not in the conventional, human interpretation of the word) and it certainly is not a factor in anything that Jessie chooses to do – take, for example, Jessie’s last huge decision to walk to the sands. If this were all about true love, wouldn’t she have dragged her true love with her? No. She goes by herself. Very, very late in the book (i’m talking the last 30 pages) there is, I guess, what can be interpreted as a romantic development, but Jessie isn’t exactly a romantic person. I didn’t see this relationship as a romance so much as it is a reunion between people that thought they would never see each other again. But this is all moot, and I don’t even want to spend any more time on this because the book is really not a romance, it’s only a teeny tiny 1% of the overall book, and it’s distracting from the main point:

Dust is above all a deconstruction of the zombie myth.

Instead of using the undead as a catalyst for human ugliness, it instead approaches zombies as people…that have died and been born again. It is their story, through one of their own’s eyes. It is not a cautionary tale about the evils of humanity or the presumptions of science or whatnot; to reduce the complexity of Dust to such an interpretation does the book a grave disservice. I’d liken Dust to a novel such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, which plays on the same human/inhuman blurry areas (but more on that in the character section below).

I will say, however, that Dust is a book that clearly is NOT for everyone. Take the ending, for example (which I think, as a zombie fan, is an homage to a cornerstone of scifi horror) – it’s a risk and understandably, not for everyone. But for me? I loved it.

Ana: Dust has a promising start and I loved the first half of the book: with gore and violence and a wonderful look at how Jessie lives now. I especially liked how zombies are still decaying and will eventually, and very slowly, go through what all dead bodies go through: all the stages of decay but with the different that it happens to the zombies whilst they are conscious. It is in fact the living dead in all their horrifying glory.

But is Dust really that different from the average zombie novel? I don’t think so. Sure, it is from a different perspective ,ie from the living dead themselves but at its core it still deals with fear, love and what it is to be human. THAT’s what bothers me the most about the book – that it promises a world of difference, but that it doesn’t deliver.

I will agree with Thea when she says that Dust is above all a deconstruction of the zombie myth but beyond that, is where we fundamentally disagree. I think that this deconstruction is not well done at all, it is heavy – handed and yes, with an underlying message. I think that the idea that zombies “are just people who died” is hammered over and over again in a less than subtle way. In trying to show the other side’s story, I believe the author did in fact a 360 turn going right back at the starting point – by making them just like humans only with a different diet. The more the story progresses, the more Jessie and her companions sound like humans and when the virus hits they even start to look like humans. Which brings me back to the point I am trying to make: the story to me is not unique, or original; it simply deals with flawed characters who can be as good and bad, as violent or not, as humans are. Perhaps that is actually the point. In which case, it is just another story that doesn’t have anything special to it, at least not for me.

It is also very predictable: I saw the resolution coming a mile away, I saw the identity of one the characters as soon as she walked into the novel and I saw the romantic development between Jessie and another character basically from page 1 and yes, there is romance there although not – I agree with Thea here – central to the story. And although I don’t think that the book is about messages, they are undoubtedly THERE : in what humans are capable of, what science is capable of, what people would do for misguided love. It is so there that at one point Jessie muses:

“typical human and no, I refused to start thinking of myself as one too. “Speaking,” I said, as coldly and calmly as I could muster, “as someone with a little actual afterlife experience? This isn’t hell. There is no hell. It’s just what your kind always do to the world in one form of another, so pull yourself together and keep walking”.

I kept thinking about “identity” and how what really differentiates zombies and humans is simply how each chooses to consume their food: zombies like it raw, humans like it cooked. At first, it seemed to be more than that: it seemed that there was going to be MORE that identified the zombies as separate entities– perhaps their aggressive culture, perhaps their danse macabre – but the former can be put down as another thing that is actually remnants of their humanity and the latter is never truly explored. I think this makes the book less complex and more simplistic, as a matter of fact.

But beyond that: the novel has problems with pacing as well with the second half dragging itself to a conclusion full of navel gazing. With regards to the ending: count me in as one that did not like it, but then again, I am not a horror-sci fi fan and probably failed to see as the homage that it possibly is.

On the characters:

Thea: Dust is one of those books that gets better upon reflection, especially from a character perspective. As with any book filtered through the perspective of a single character, there is a degree of unreliability – and I think that it is important to keep in mind that our narrator, Jessie, is a flawed character that sees what she wants to see, and interprets things in the way she wants to interpret them. Again, the important thing to remember about Dust is that it is a book about the life after death – about people that have lived and died, and have been reborn. As such, Jessie and her ilk experience emotions that are very human and familiar – and yet at the same time, they are not exactly human (which makes sense – if all of our life experiences contribute to how we see things and interpret the world around us, the effect is even more dramatic on those that have been killed and reanimated). And this is the main point of contention between Ana and myself, because Ana thinks that the emotions that Jessie feels are TOO human to be zombie, to which I ask, what then makes a zombie? Must they only be mindless creatures hungering for braaaaaains? And then I would ask, why this hate against the zombie? In other books featuring vampires or fairies or werewolves or angels, they all experience “human” emotions, and those are considered successes or acceptable, but when it’s a zombie this is a failure? It seems hypocritical to me. Zombie discrimination, I tell you! Again, this is Ms. Turner’s deconstruction of the zombie, by making them something other – not human, certainly not, but not so unfamiliar either. Not living, not dead, but something in between.

As a narrator and protagonist, Jessie is a mess of sharp edges, tough attitude, and strangely, vulnerability. Jessie’s narration is by turns funny, astute, and hard. Though she was only fifteen when she died, death and revival have a way of changing a body, both physically and emotionally. Through her memories, we learn about her less-than-ideal human life, and her final ability to find a home only beyond the grave. Her relationship with her gang, especially the tangled, complicated relationship with Joe, is fodder for reflection. Yes, Jessie feels emotions – remorse, love, hate, guilt, although I would argue that her brand of emotion is twisted and if human in origin, no longer exactly human in expression – and over the course of the book she grows and changes as a character, as do the other main characters in the book. And, unlike vampires locked in eternal youth, or zombies in films locked in eternal hunger, Jessie and her crew’s desires for food do not dictate who or what they are. They are not in permanent stasis, as each zombie has a life cycle of its own. When the shit hits the fan later in the book and both zombies and humans begin to change again, mutating from undead to..sort of living again, these emotions and needs morph as well. I think it’s a pretty awesome catalyst for character development, and an original way to take a look at the connection between eating, and (non)humanity.

“How many kinds of living and dead and living dead and dead living had I been in just these few months, these few days, after the stasis of plain old human living and dying? I deserved some kind of existential medal.”

As for the other characters, I thought they were all wonderfully handled and written, in particular ‘maldie Renee (lost and friendless and discriminated against for the fact that she was embalmed), the dustie Florian with his pacifism and insightful senility, the quiet and less aggressive (yet courageous) Linc, and of course, the manipulative, screeching electric guitar that is Joe. If there’s anything that will differentiate the zombie from the human, I think it is apparent in Jessie and Joe’s relationship, in which they crush each other’s bones and fight to the point of threatening each other’s deaths as a normality, but find solace in that rage. It is what by hoo terms we would call an abusive relationship, but our interpretations don’t really apply to the walking dead. Theirs is a tangled mess of hate and trust and love, and while there are glimpses of humanity and these characters (or at least Jessie) has some semblance of right and wrong, the zombie rulebook is completely different from the human one. It is this otherness that makes the deconstruction a success, in my opinion.

I will briefly address what I know Ana will bring up (based on our emails back and forth). I just want to say that I do NOT think the author assigns any moral judgements to her characters, to Jessie’s relationships, or to any aspect of the story. Jessie does have a sense of morality, although it clearly has changed since her time as a human (from a vegan animal rights activist to an animal huntress and zombie killer as one of the most fierce of the gang’s fighters, and in the end, eating anyone and anything – human, plant, inanimate object, friend, enemy – in order to survive). The presence of Jessie’s ability to make decisions based on her own concepts of morality does not equate to a moral message or judgement for the book, however. In my opinion, this just confirms how these biological changes effect the experience and perception of each character in this book. I think that it is important to remember that Dust is a book about what are by definition non-human characters, with vestiges of humanity – they remember who they were, certain things from their lives, and they feel emotions. But it is vital to keep in mind that they are creatures that have died and been reborn, their very brains rewired and reconfigured. They do not think in the same way that we do, as much as a twenty-year old thinks and behaves in the way that an eighty-year old would, and so for that reason their motivations may sit strangely with us hoo readers – but that, I think, is the point. There is no underlying message, no judgement or subtext that says that zombies are GOOD and humans are EVIL or any such nonsense. I urge everyone to please, please, for the love of all that is good in the world of literature, to try to step outside of your comfort zone and view Jessie’s world through the eyes of someone that is neither living nor dead, but someone caught in between.

Ana: What are zombies? I don’t know. They might not be all about braaaaaaaaaiins but I think it is clear that they are not simply “humans who died” either. They are “other”. And this is indeed the greatest point of contention between Thea and me when it comes to the book: I think that the book completely fails in capturing this “otherness” of these characters and fully exploring and developing it. I think that the zombies here are utterly familiar, completely humanised and to me that include human moral judgments as well or else Jessie would not mind eating humans; or else Jessie would not know that there is “right” and “wrong” and that her abusive relationship with Joe for example falls under the latter. That is definitely this awareness here and I honestly don’t see a complete re-wire of their brains. Dust might be a book about non-human characters but still so very human that they still have very human concepts of morality and emotions.

Jessie is very much still human, (even though she will tell you that she is not and I am agreeing on the unreliability of her narrative here), wanting to be loved and accepted which is in direct contrast to what happened to her when she was alive – she was neither loved or accepted when alive. Which is why she fell into the relationship with Joe – not because as a zombie she doesn’t care anymore, or her brain has been re-wired but because of her very human characteristics of wanting to fit in, be accepted. At one point she thinks:

“Even knowing then and later that I should have collected my strength and wits, turned around and left for good, no looking back. I stayed because of him. Like I said, I was fifteen”

and then:

“I hated that look. I hated that I could never even see the sorry part of it anymore, the part that really mattered, all I could see was how it was still always me that was wrong and him that was right. Always. No matter what.”

This reads as though it could apply to anybody. I would have loved to see the “otherness” or a true Zombie 2.0 story. To me, I just read another book of a character that had family issues and carried them to grave and beyond – with a bit of mystery on the side.

Final Thoughts, Observations and Rating:

Thea: Clearly, Dust is not for everyone. At times funny, at times painful, this reimagining of the zombie resonated for me, like the strings of the electric guitar or quiet plink of piano Jessie hears in her undead brain. It’s a strange book, but a memorable one for all that. A notable, if not favorite, read of 2010 for me.

Ana: Definitely not for everyone and above all, definitely not for me. Dust left me completely cold and underwhelmed.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

My right arm fell off today. Lucky for me, I’m left-handed.

In the accident that killed me I rocketed from the back seat straight through the windshield–no seatbelt, yeah, I know–and the pavement sheared my arm to nothing below the shoulder. Not torn off, but dangling by thin, precious little bits of skin and bone and ligament. I had a closed casket, I’m sure of it, because they never wired the arm or glued it or any other pretty undertaker trick. I managed to crawl back out of the ground without its help anyway, and of course after nine perfectly uneventful years of fighting and dancing and hunting and getting by fine with the left arm, the right finally shuffles its coil right on the banks of the Great River County Park’s not-so-Great River, smack in the middle of a meat run. Joe, my boy, my backup, was not sympathetic in the least….

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Dust has a pretty cool website, complete with extras such as the following book trailers (this one is hilarious, if not really having anything at all to do with the book):

You can see the other trailers HERE.

Rating:

Thea: 8 – Excellent

Ana: 5 – Meh

Reading Next: Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon

Giveaway Details:

Courtesy of publisher Ace, we have FIVE copies of Dust up for grabs. The contest is open to addresses in the United States only, and will run until September 4th at 11:59 pm (PST). To enter, leave a comment here telling us what your favorite zombie novel is. Only ONE entry per person, please! Multiple comments from the same I.P. address will be automatically disqualified. Good luck!

Last year, we had two days of Bleak Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Book Goodness – and since we love this genre so much, we decided to have a reprisal this year (this is the first of a few dedicated days!). Today, we take a look at some new titles about the end of the world as we know it…

Birthmarked by Caragh O’Brien

Publisher: Roaring Book Press
Publication Date: March 2010
Hardcover: 362 Pages

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixt…more After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents are arrested.

Badly scarred since childhood, Gaia is a strong, resourceful loner who begins to question her society. As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she herself is arrested and imprisoned.

Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, BIRTHMARKED explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where one girl can make all the difference, and a real hero makes her own moral code.

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in a planned series

How did I get this book: Bought (at The Strand during BEA!)

Review:

Since her childhood, Gaia has trained with her mother to become the next midwife for her district, just outside the protective walls of the Enclave. And one fated night, sixteen-year old Gaia finds herself in an exciting position – while her mother is busy with another birth, Gaia is summoned to attend to her very first solo delivery. And, as it is her first delivery, the baby that is born must be Advanced to the Enclave. The laws for midwives are simple and absolute: the first three healthy children they deliver each month are to be advanced (that is, given over) to the walled-off Enclave. These children are the lucky and the blessed, for advancement means that the will never want for food nor suffer the hardships of life outside the fortress’s walls. But despite the happiness this means for those first children, their birthmothers are, understandably, distraught. As Gaia heads home from delivering her very first advanced child, she finds a grim, cold soldier awaiting her return. From his cruel lips, Gaia learns her mother and father have been taken prisoner by the Enclave under suspicion of keeping some sort of illegal records – though Gaia has no idea what her law-abiding parents could have done to anger the Enclave. Gaia also learns that she has inherited her mother’s job as the midwife of her district. Terrified for her family, Gaia struggles to find a way to do the impossible – to understand why her parents were taken, and to breach the Enclave’s walls and rescue her parents before they are executed.

Birthmarked is Caragh O’Brien’s first novel, and while highly anticipated, is something of a mixed emotions read. The idea of Birthmarked is unquestionably solid, blending familiar elements of post-apocalyptic dystopian novels such as the question of reproductive problems and rights from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale, or environmental catastrophe and the ‘walled-off haves and have nots’ trope from books such as Julie Bertagna’s Exodus & Zenith or Carrie Mac’s Triskelia trilogy. I love the idea of a future society ravaged by climate change and genetic short-sightedness, and a totalitarian style of government struggling to separate the rich from the poor generations after their walls have gone up. And yet, for all this…there are significant problems with Birthmarked that kept me from enjoying it with full abandon.

I’ll start with What Worked: the backstory of the world (three hundred or so years after global warming has reached a critical point), the overwhelming lack of genetic diversity within the Enclave (leading to prevalent defects, such as hemophilia), the anger of people being told whom they can or cannot marry, and the separation of the poor outside the walls (as their children are taken inside as valuable commodities).

I liked all of these things…but at the heart of Birthmarked is a central fallacy; there is something that almost ALL dystopian novels have in common, a commonality – one at which Birthmarked fails spectacularly.

The book lacks a Truly Villainous Government.

Heck, what the Enclave is doing is by no means ideal – but it’s hardly the stuff of despicable oppression. The Enclave taking children from outside its walls and giving them safe, secure new lives does not exactly an Orwellian Big Brother make. Furthermore, when we finally learn why the government has its panties in a twist over Gaia’s mother’s records, the central conflict of the novel disintegrates completely. Had the Enclave been taking the advanced children and harvesting them for organs or stem cells or mulching them down for food or something equally horrifying, perhaps the story’s conflict might have made a bit more sense. But as it stands…these babies are brought in to help society keep going. Is it ideal? No. Is it EVIL OMG, THE HORROR! THE DYSTOPIAN HORROR?! Not really.

Furthermore, the whole central conflict of the story falls apart under scrutiny – WHY on earth wouldn’t the government keep records of every child? WHY the death penalty and ire at Gaia’s mother for marking advanced children with a tattoo and keeping track of them? It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never before read a book so focused on hemophilia as the downfall for society – and on that note, in addition to hemophilia wouldn’t there be other physical manifestations of generations of inbreeding? If the recessive traits of hemophilia can be expressed in female children, wouldn’t there also be some other recessive trait mutations or disfigurations (of the jaw, of the cranium, etc) present? In a culture so focused on appearances – Gaia is turned away from being advanced because of a burn scar on her face (which IS NOT A GENETIC DISORDER, I might add!) – shouldn’t people look a little more funky and less beautiful, given the rampant inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity?

This is to say nothing of the exposition-y info-dumps along the way (the explanation of chromosomes – using chrome spoons, oho! – for example was particularly cringe-worthy), the superficial examination of certain characters (again with the midwifing/healer women roles!?), the sheer predictability of the plot, or – most infuriating of all – the incredible convenience with which heroine Gaia is miraculously bailed out every time she is in Mortal Peril or has a Big Problem to solve (e.g. Gaia is about to be sentenced to death…BUT LUCKILY a handsome, high ranking soldier saves her life!; Gaia’s luck has run out and she needs to find her mother before she is executed the next day…BUT LUCKILY a handsome soldier takes pity on her and helps her out!).

Suffice to say, I was a little underwhelmed with Birthmarked. That said, the book wasn’t all bad. I certainly finished the book eagerly enough, and certain parts of the story shone – Gaia’s childhood memories, her flashbacks of her father, in particular, stood out as memorable scenes. Although I didn’t much care for the “romance” (which felt stilted, contrived, and utterly predictable), I did like the relationship Gaia had with her family and other characters throughout the book – and Gaia herself is a gutsy heroine with admirable muster (if not the sharpest tool in the shed).

There’s enough to keep readers engaged with Birthmarked, but there are so many excellent post-apocalyptic dystopian novels out there, that it’s hard to truly recommend this one. But, I’ll stick around for book 2, in hopes that the books grow on me.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

In the dim hovel, the mother clenched her body into one final, straining push, and the baby slithered out into Gaia’s ready hands.

“Good job,” Gaia said. “Wonderful. It’s a girl.”

The baby cried indignantly, and Gaia breathed a sigh of relief as she checked for toes and fingers and a perfect back. It was a good baby, healthy and well formed, if small. Gaia wrapped the child in a blanket, then held the bundle toward the flickering firelight for the exhausted mother to see.

Gaia wished her own mother were there to help, especially with managing the afterbirth and the baby. She knew, nor mally, she wasn’t supposed to give the baby to the mother to hold, not even for an instant, but now the mother was reaching and Gaia didn’t have enough hands.

“Please,” the young woman whispered. Her fingers becko ned tenderly.

The baby’s cries subsided, and Gaia passed her over. She tried not to listen to the mother’s gentle, cooing noises as she cleaned up between her legs, moving gently and efficiently as her mother had taught her. She was excited and a little proud. This was her first delivery, and it was an unassisted delivery, too. She had helped her mother many times, and she’d known for years that she would be a midwife, but now it was finally real.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Rating: 5 – Meh

POD by Stephen Wallenfals

Publisher: Namelos
Publication Date: April 2010
Paperback: 192 Pages

POD is the story of a global cataclysmic event, told from the view points of Megs, a 12-year-old streetwise girl trapped in a hotel parking garage in Los Angeles; and 16-year-old Josh, who is stuck in a house in Prosser, Washington, with his increasingly obsessive compulsive father. Food and water and time are running out. Will Megs survive long enough to find her mother? Will Josh and his father survive each other?

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in a planned series (I hope?!)

How did I get this book: Bought (during the same trip to The Strand!)

Review:

They appeared one morning, materializing in the sky after an impossibly loud sound heard by every person on the planet – hovering black orbs.

Pods.

The spheres hang in the clouds, suspended by technology unknown to man. More than just ominous shapes in the sky, the pods also prove deadly – disintegrating any humans that attempt to step outdoors and interfering with all methods of communication. With no way to organize, no news, no electricity, and with food running out, humanity faces a bleak future.

Told through the chapter-alternating perspectives of two young adults, POD follows sixteen-year old Josh and twelve-year old Megs. In a small town in Washington, Josh, his father, and their dog are closeted in their home and Josh struggles with the rules and responsibilities his father imposes to help keep them alive. And Megs, alone in a Los Angeles parking lot, hides and scavenges for food and water from parked car to parked car, desperately avoiding the men that have taken control of the hotel and its guests.

And all the while, the pods stand silent vigil…

Unlike Birthmarked, POD left me one seriously satisfied customer. Told from two very different – but equally harrowing – voices, POD rocks. Almost cinematic in its delivery (the image of black alien spherical ships zapping errant humans reminiscent of classic Sci-Fi drive-in B-movies), POD teases readers – though the alien invasion is imminent, not a single extraterrestrial is actually seen. With his apocalyptic invasion, instead of focusing on the sensational, Mr. Wallenfels focuses on the thing that makes the best apocalypse novels successful – the human element. The choice to use two young adults in different locations surviving the same (presumably) global event is ingenious and incredibly effective. Alternating each chapter with Josh and his deteriorating father with Megs and her desperate situation os the “parking lot pirate,” the story builds to a terse, high level of tension.

Which brings me to the reason why POD works so well – in addition to its expert plotting and storytelling technique – that is, because of the strength of its detailed, wholly genuine protagonists. Both characters go through very different ordeals, both do some serious growing up in the span of 28 long, grueling days. Josh’s narrative begins as somewhat spoiled and self-centered, as his biggest problems are initially centered around whining about his father’s strict food rationing methods and cold, cruel indifference to their family dog. While he deals with the injustice of only eating a meal a day, Megs (left behind by her mother in the hotel parking lot before the appearance of the ominous pods) hides from terrifying, violent men with guns, all the while hunting for any food she can – stale popcorn kernels and forgotten lint covered candies stuck between car seats, and subsisting off of ketchup packets and a soup of gunky, tepid, melted cooler water. From the first moment we meet Megs, its clear she’s a perceptive, cuttingly smart young girl – she may only be twelve, but nothing slips by her (as seen in the strained relationship with her mother). While Megs is the character who faces the most overt danger (and yeah, ok, I preferred her gutsy, defiant narrative over Josh’s), Josh also goes through hell of a different, more introspective sort. The relationship between the teen boy and his father is incredibly genuine, running the gamut of emotions from resentment to respect to love – and the fate of this family is harrowing stuff. I don’t want to spoil anything, so just trust me when I say that Josh’s tragic, haunting story is no walk in the park, even though it initially may seem so, especially in contrast with Megs’ adrenaline-fueled game of hide and seek from some very, very bad people.

What else can I say about POD? It’s touching, it’s fast-paced, it’s terrifying, and – like the best freakin’ apocalypse novels – it’s all about flawed, real characters. I loved every second of this book, and I can only hope that Stephen Wallenfels is hard at work finishing up the trilogy. (There’s something of a cliffhanger ending, and I need to know what happens next. IMMEDIATELY.)

Notable Quotes/Parts: Two excerpts, one from each narrator. From Josh:

We share a look but say nothing.

Birds fly from branch to branch. A gust of wind sends leaves skittering across the patio floor. Storm clouds gather and darken a turbulent sky. The sun feels like it’s going down instead of up. Sirens pierce the moment. It’s an ambulance and a fire truck, somewhere close. This wakes Dutch. He sees us, jumps to his feet, presses his nose to the glass.

I reach for the door.

“Josh, wait!”

The urgency in Dad’s voice stops me cold. He’s looking up. I follow his eyes. The air is sucked out of my lungs. My jaw hangs open, numb.

Dropping down through the clouds, silent like a spider on a web, is a massive black sphere.

It’s a mile away at least, but even from this distance it dwarfs the neighborhoods below. I brace myself for the horror of watching houses crushed with people inside. But it stops well above the trees, maybe five hundred feet off the ground. It hovers soundlessly.

Dad whispers, “Sweet Jesus.”

He points to another one, farther to the east. Then another.

Within half a minute the entire horizon is dotted with black spheres. Dutch scratches at the glass, oblivious to the scene playing out above his head.

The spheres begin to rotate.

Then, as if on cue, they all start emitting jagged beams of white-blue light. The beams split off into smaller and smaller ones, like twigs off a branch, some into the air, most striking the ground. Two cars are speeding down a fire road on Horse Heaven Hills. A flash of light and they’re both gone. No explosion, no ball of flame. Just gone.

Dad whispers, “Sweet Jesus.”

From Megs:

It finally stops. My whole body is shaking. The car feels like it’s spinning and my ears hurt. I don’t know what to do, so I bury my head in my sleeping bag and hope that it doesn’t happen again.

Where’s Mom? Why me? Am I sick? All these questions are flooding my brain—when there’s another noise.

Sirens.

Not just a couple. Hundreds. I sit up and look around. There are flashes of light, like lightning only without the thunder. Even though Mom said not to, I turn on the radio. It’s just static, no matter what button I push. Then people start running into the parking garage.

First one or two, then a wide-eyed flood. Men in pajamas, women in nightshirts dragging their sobbing kids. A guy wearing only a T-shirt and boxers unlocks the blue car next to ours. He comes out with a gun, sprints to the exit ramp, and starts shooting at the sky. He disappears in a flash of light. Cars start, engines roar. People are trying to leave and other people are trying to stop them. A mom with her two young kids, a boy and girl, run toward the SUV. The little girl drops her stuffed rabbit. She tries to go back, but her mother picks her up and throws her crying into the SUV.

Horns mix with the sirens.

A man trips and falls to the ground.

Cars drive over him like he’s a speed bump. I yell at them to stop, but no one hears me. Then the sound of breaking glass, tearing metal—more people screaming. Cars screech down from the upper levels and ram into cars on the ground floor. The SUV is trying to back out of its parking spot. A speeding truck clips the rear fender, crashing it sideways into another car. Now it’s trapped. Moments later the mom and her kids spill out the passenger side. Blood is streaming down the little girl’s forehead. The mom looks toward the exit. Cars drive out, one after another, and disappear in flashes of light. A red BMW slams on its brakes. It skids halfway into the street and disappears. The mom picks up the girl and they run for the lobby door. The boy stops and turns like he forgot something, but his mom grabs his arm and pulls him away. His face is twisted in a scream.

I smell burning rubber, engine exhaust, gasoline—and then I feel something.

A warm wetness spreads inside my sleeping bag.

Tears stream down my face, they smear on the glass. I feel like I can’t breathe. The sounds outside swallow up everything, even the air. I curl up into a ball on the back seat and close my eyes so tight they hurt. But I still see it—cars driving over the fallen man.

And those awful blinding flashes.

You can read a full excerpt from both of these characters online HERE.

Rating: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: For the Win by Cory Doctorow

Title: Kraken

Author: China Mieville

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Del Rey (US) / Macmillan (UK)
Publication Date: June 2010
Hardcover: 528 pages

With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this—or any other—year. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about—or prevent—the End of All Things.

In the Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre’s prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux—better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy’s tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.

As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens—human and otherwise—are adept in magic and murder.

There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanity—and beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRC—the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit—a branch of London’s finest that fights sorcery with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the city’s entrails. There is Grisamentum, London’s greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifying—yet darkly charismatic—demonic duo.

All of them—and others—are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel (one hopes…)

How did I get this book: Bought ebook

Why did I read this book: Because I’ve heard nothing but praise for China Mieville; because he just won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the third time; because tentacled monsters of the deep ROCK; because I love H.P. Lovecraft and anything even remotely Lovecraftian; because I got a sweet deal on the ebook.

Review:

Well, let’s start out by being blunt, shall we? Kraken really, really was not my cup of tea. Convoluted plotting, glacial pacing, plus hollow characters – no matter how intelligent or geek-tastic the writing – does not an engrossing read make. Suffice to say, my first exposure to the esteemed China Mieville did not go well.

With that off my chest, let’s backtrack.

Kraken is the story of Billy – middling-level curator at the at the Natural History Museum in London. In addition to preserving cephalopods (a job Billy has remarkable skill at), Billy’s other primary responsibility is to guide the daily tours of the museum. It is on one such tour that Billy leads his group to the department’s pièce de résistance – an honest to goodness, six meter-long preserved Giant Squid – when he makes an impossible discovery. The giant squid has somehow disappeared.

With the squid’s disappearance, Billy’s life is turned upside-down. Everyone seems to think Billy knows something about the missing squid. First a bizarre secret police unit called the FSRC (a sort of BPRD-esque/Torchwood-y government shadow organization for the occult) tries to recruit him. Then, Billy is abducted by a strange, dangerous duo and shoved into a magical London, as he’s hounded for his suspected knowledge of the missing Kraken. And even more bizarrely, Billy is saved by a former museum employee and Teuthist, forced to drink some crazytrippy squid ink, and hallowed as a prophet by the Teuthy-kraken worshipers.

And all that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Billy learns that there are other parallel realities, where the Newtonian physics don’t apply – complete with space-folding origami masters, evil overlord talking tattoos, demonic henchmen, over-zealous cultists, chain-smoking psychic policewomen, and all kinds of familiars and magic-wielders. Everybody wants a piece of Billy, but the mystery remains – what happened to the giant squid? And is the apocalypse truly nigh?

So. All of this, even writing a brief plot synopsis, sounds pretty ace in theory. Giant Squid? Awesome. New Weird meets Urban Fantasy? Awesome. Pop-geekery injected in every imaginitive subplot? Um, hell yeah, AWESOME.

So what happened? What, exactly, got lost in translation from theory to practice?

How can I describe my first impression of China Mieville, via Kraken. It’s kind of like…if someone took the awesome imaginative scope of Neil Gaiman, but replaced his characters with hollow analogues and then destroyed the beauty of Gaiman’s prose by way of forced, dare I say pretentious, erudition. Tack on a few utterly pointless sideplots whilst burying any remaining spark of story in unnecessary length (effectively sucking out any existing Lovecraftian/pop-culturian fun) and…well, then you have Kraken.

Perhaps the best way to describe this bizarre tangle of a story is with a single word: OVERKILL.

There are fabulous ideas in the novel, and wondrous strange possibilities. A possessed Captain Kirk doll. A kraken-lackin’ apocalypse (terrible pun, I apologize). An awesome new urban fantasy-style take on London Town. And yet…all of these ideas together was too much. The superfluous – but cool – details took over to the detriment of the story (e.g. after a hundred plus pages of Wati in Kirk-form, the “oh cool!” factor wears off and simply becomes tiresome). What begins as a quirky bizarre trip into psychedelic squid ink and a whole new side of London very quickly becomes a quagmire of randomness. The actual main plot-line of the novel – the mystery of the disappearing squid and Billy’s role in it all – is overshadowed, lost in so much nonsensical bric-a-brac. And that’s to say nothing of the characters! Billy, our protagonist (I guess) is oddly soulless, lacking any true personality or voice. Collingsworth is a caricature of sexy-hardass police officer, looking cool while smoking her ciggies and effortlessly wearing her costume-like uniform. The cultists are predictable minions, the supernatural creatures of London not really that original or memorable (even Goss and Subby feel reminiscent of Gaiman, but lacking the necessary wit or charisma). Don’t even get me started on the utterly superfluous character, Marge (ironically, her full name is Marginalia, although her facetime in the story is anything but marginal).

In other words, Kraken is fun-quirky-randomness gone amok in a really unsatisfying way. Overkill.

The same applies to the writing style. Now it’s no secret that Mr. Mieville is a very intelligent person (holding a B.A. in Social Anthropology from Cambridge, and a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics in addition to his other academic and literary accolades), and this extends to his writing. The man has an extensive vocabulary and isn’t afraid to use it, an admirable trait to be sure. But…there’s a point where Kraken crosses the line from oddly entertaining delight to forced, awkward tedium. For example:

There was a many-dimensional grid of geography, economy, obligation and punishment. Crime overlapped with faith — “Neadsen’s run by the Dharma Bastards,” Dane said — though many guerrilla entrepreneurs were secular, agnostic, atheist or philistine ecumenical. But faith contoured the landscape.

(At times, the writing put me in the mind of that episode of Friends when Joey discovers the Thesaurus.) (I’m not saying that Mr. Mieville needs a thesaurus – doubtless, he is a depository of a formidable amount knowledge, a veritable vocabularean Hercules – but it’s the kind of writing that feels forced instead of effortless; and unintentionally comical at times with how roundabout each sentence could be.)

Obviously, this review is just my personal opinion, as Mr. Mieville has won many distinguished awards and enjoys immense success at the top of the British new weird SFF genre. This particular book – the particular writing style – simply left me cold. It’s not my cup of tea. Bowl of kraken-juice. Plate o’ calamari. Take your pick.

In parting from this sadly underwhelmed review, there is a particular passage from Kraken that I think sums up my feelings towards the novel perfectly:

The Teuthex recited the service, his words drifting in and out of English, into Latin or Pig Latin, into what sounded like Greek, into strange slippery syllables that were perhaps dreams of sunken languages or the invented muttering of squidherds, Atlantean, Hyperborean, the pretend tongue of R’lyeh. Billy had expected ecstasy, the febrile devotions of the desperate speaking in tongues or tentacles, but this fervour — and fervour it was, he could see the tears and gripping hands of the devout — was controlled. The flavour of the sect was vicarly, noncharismatic, an Anglo-Catholicism of mollusc-worship.

Vicarly, noncharismatic mollusc-worship, indeed.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the prologue:

The sea is full of saints. You know that? You know that: you’re a big boy.

The sea’s full of saints and it’s been full of saints for years. Since longer than anything. Saints were there before there were even gods. They were waiting for them, and they’re still there now.

Saints eat fish and shellfish. Some of them catch jellyfish and some of them eat rubbish. Some saints eat anything they can find. They hide under rocks; they turn themselves inside out; they spit up spirals. There’s nothing saints don’t do.

Make this shape with your hands. Like that. Move your fingers. There, you made a saint. Look out, here comes another one! Now they’re fighting! Yours won.

There aren’t any big corkscrew saints any more, but there are still ones like sacks and ones like coils, and ones like robes with flapping sleeves. What’s your favourite saint? I’ll tell you mine. But wait a minute, first, do you know what it is makes them all saints? They’re all a holy family, they’re all cousins. Of each other, and of . . . you know what else they’re cousins of?

That’s right. Of gods.

Alright now. Who was it made you? You know what to say.

Who made you?

Additional Thoughts: Apparently (and fittingly), China Mieville is a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan. I, too, happen to be a Lovecraft fan, and yet, beyond a Cthulhu namedrop, there’s very little actual Lovecraft in Kraken. One story I kept thinking about whilst reading Kraken was “Dagon” – one of my personal favorites, and a short story that clearly Mr. Mieville pays homage to (in spirit if not truly in form, considering the heft and density of Kraken).

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

~ “Dagon” by H.P. Lovecraft

You can read the full story online for free, HERE.

Rating: 5 – Meh; I want to give Kraken a 6 because it’s not a BAD book, but for me and my personal reading tastes? I have to go with my gut and stick with the underwhelmed 5. I *will* give China Mieville’s other works a try in the future, however. Starting with another ocean-centric novel, The Scar.

Reading Next: Peter and Max by Bill Willingham

Title: The End League – Volume 1: The Ballad of Big Nothing

Written by Rick Remender, pencils and covers by Mat Broome, inks by Sean Parsons, colors by Wendy Broome and James Rochelle

Genre: Graphic Novel, Superheroes

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Publication Date: December 2008
Trade Paperback: 104 pages

Stand alone or series: Collects issues #1-4; first of a two-volume collection

A thematic merging of The Lord of the Rings and Watchmen, The End League follows a cast of the last remaining super men and women as they embark on a desperate and perilous journey through a world dominated by evil, in hopes of locating the one remaining artifact that can save humanity – the Hammer of Thor.

How did I get these books: Review copies (of Vol. 1 & Vol. 2) from the publisher

Why did I read these books: Did you read the blurb? Touted as a merging of Tolkien and Moore, I was intrigued…and also more than a little skeptical. Those be big words, son. It was with nervous excitement that I headed into The End League…

Review:

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and it’s all Astonishman’s fault. After following the instructions of the dread Lexington, Astonishman has unwittingly unleashed the apocalypse – hurling a nuclear warhead at what he believed to be murderous alien creatures, the blast off alien engines and causing an unprecedented explosion that altered the earth’s axis, killed the majority of the population, and mutated 1 in 10,000 in the ensuing radiation. Now, years after the Green Event, Earth is a ravaged wasteland, where refugees fight for food and live under the tyrannical fist of Dead Lexington – yes, he who tricked Astonishman into destroying the world. To set things right and to vanquish Lex once and for all, Astonishman and his ragtag team of superheroes can only hope for god-alien Thor’s help – with Mjöllnir, Thor’s Hammer, Earth and humanity might be saved.

Ok, so The End League is not exactly Watchmen or Lord of the Rings. (Not even remotely – I have no idea how LotR even draws a comparison here. At least I can kinda-sorta see how one might say there’s an itty-bitty drop of Watchmen in this book. If you squint real hard and look at the story from a few hundred feet away. In the dark. Maybe.) From a storytelling standpoint, The End League has promise, but is somewhat underwhelming. I loved the idea of the world’s most beloved superhero unwittingly unleashing the apocalypse on the planet – borne of the best intentions and all that jazz – and I like where I think Remender was heading with a group of superheroes fighting an impossible battle after the world has ended. And yet…the story lacks a certain cohesiveness. There are clever ideas throughout – the origin of the Norse “Gods,” the relative/popular nature of what defines evil, demons from Hell running amok, etc – but they never really work together. Instead, these disparate threads clamor for attention, making for a cacophonous, disjointed reading experience. There’s also a lot of jumping back and forth in time, from character to character (half the time, we don’t even know who these characters are – names or otherwise) which is distracting and gives the book an uneven feel.

But the story isn’t the worst part.

No, the reason why The End League suffers so badly (and the reason why ultimately the series is a DNF for me) is because of the incredibly stilted flatness of its characters. And in a book like The End League, the characters have to reverberate with readers in order to truly work. I’m all for new realms of superheroes/villains; there are no rules already in place, no stifling continuity or character presets to restrain a writer. Take Mark Waid’s Irredeemable (and Incorruptible), for example – his take on superheroes works because he makes the characters work. Waid focuses on the fragile superhero psyche, giving insights to the Plutonian’s past and what made him the unstoppable force of death that he is at present. In contrast, Rick Remender just doesn’t quite pull it together. His characters simply fall flat, the writing clunky and dry. For the first two issues, all readers hear about is how guilty (and shockingly – if subconsciously – narcissistic, I might add) Astonishman feels about destroying the planet whilst marinading in his dour melancholy soup, his hubris the downfall of the entire planet. And good GOD, he’s boring. Instead of illustrating Astonishman’s horror at what he’s done, Remender has him internally monologue about it – and that’s never, ever good.

The real problem with Astonishman, and the rest of the marginalized league characters, is how simplistic and two-dimensional they are. There’s no movement, no true development of these characters – rather, they all feel like pontificating talking heads to advance the wafer-thin story. Writing like this, for example:

“Your machines ripped the information from my mind. You always feared Brian. Feared he would inspire the people to rise against you. Soon you’ll see that in your craven assassination you’ve only made him a martyr.”

or this:

“This place reeks of your impotent values. This citadel of seclusion – a museum of the ineffectual. A trembling last finger gripping the edge of a bottomless cliff. A prison to wait for an inevitable failed conclusion.”

Yeesh. I’m not even going to get into an incredibly awkward proclamation of luuuuurve at one point in the second issue…suffice to say, I was not thrilled.

To add insult to injury, the characters are all incredibly similar (in name, appearance, and powers) to their DC big brothers and sisters – Astonishman:Superman, Lexington:Lex Luthor, Divinity:Wonder Woman, and so on and so forth. Perhaps it would have been better if these were not such transparent analogues for DC’s JLA – but I doubt it.

On the bright side, however, there is no denying that the art in The End League is simply gorgeous. Mat Broome, in his return to the world of comics, does a phenomenal job with his strong, clean art – as do the colorists with the vibrant hues and textures they give to each frame of the book. Halfway through the fourth issue, Eric Canete (of Iron Man fame) takes over with his own distinct, very different sketchy style, which is equally gorgeous if in a different way.

Notable Quotes/Parts: The most notable part of The End League is Mat Broome’s art. Check it out:

You can check out the first three pages of The End League Vol. 1 at Dark Horse’s website, HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Lots of goodies on the Dark Horse site – check out the official trailer for the series HERE.

You can also read interviews HERE.

Verdict: While the art was superb and The End League held a wonderfully promising premise, I just couldn’t care enough by the end of the trade to continue with volume 2. Hence, the reason this is a single review today instead of a double feature. Thems be the breaks. (Although, I will say, I did enjoy the ending of issue 4)

Rating: 5 – Meh, Take it or leave it (Actually, it should be a 4, but the art brings it up a notch)

Reading Next: The Passage by Justin Cronin

Title: Crossing Over

Author: Anna Kendall

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult

Publisher: Gollancz YA
Publication Date: June 2010
Hardcover: 352 pages

Whether it’s a curse or a blessing the fact remains: whenever Roger is in enough pain he can cross over to the Land of the Dead and speak to the people there. It’s an unexpected gift – and one that, throughout Roger’s life, his violent uncle has taken advantage of. Roger has been hauled from fairground to fairground, and beaten into unconsciousness, in order to bring word of the dead to the recently bereaved. It’s a hard, painful way of life, deceiving the living for a crust of bread. So when Roger has the chance of a new life, it seems a gift. He has a chance at safety and at living a life of his choosing, tucked away in the royal court. But life is unexpected, and when Roger falls in love with the bewitching, willful Lady Cecilia he has no idea what he is letting himself in for. With every step he takes towards her, he is drawn deeper into court intrigue, into politics, and even into war . . . . . . and when Roger’s curious abilities come to the Queen’s attention, everything changes forever. Trapped in courtly politics, bound by secrets, Roger is torn between his own safety and that of his friends. He can save them . . . but only if he can bring himself to perform a deed so unthinkable that the living and the dead shrink from it alike. . .

Stand alone or series: Book one in a planned series

How did we get this book: ARCs from the publisher

Why did we read this book: We are fans of Gollancz and their impressive lineup of SF/F/H, so when we learned they were about to launch a young adult line of speculative fiction titles, we were ecstatic! Crossing Over is the third title from the imprint.

REVIEW:

First Thoughts and Impressions:

Thea: At first blush, Crossing Over is a book of solidly awesome ideas – a boy that can walk between the realms of the living and the dead finds himself a valuable gambit in the future of a queendom on the brink of civil war. While I loved the concepts of the book and the general direction of the story, I could not help but feel immensely disappointed with the actual execution of the novel. The writing amateur – at times unintentionally hilarious, at times incredibly repetitive – and the characters ill-defined. To me, Crossing Over is a novel with brilliant promise, marred by its sadly lackluster delivery.

Ana: Once again, unfortunately, I will have to echo Thea’s thoughts. I had a very similar experience with Crossing Over, starting with excitement over its potential based on a great premise and ending in disappointment. The biggest problem for me was not the writing or the plotting (although I had issues with both) but the fact that I did not care for the characters, not even the protagonist.

On the Plot:

Ana: Roger is an orphaned boy living with his aunt and no-good uncle Hartah. Ever since Roger can remember he can cross to the land of the Dead but he is only able to do that when in pain, which works just fine for his abusive uncle. The family travels from faire to faire making their living with Roger communicating with the dead and passing on messages –sometimes made up – to their families. One day, Hartah decides to take part in the wrecking of a ship but this is a fatal decision and in its aftermath, Roger is taken prisoner and then sent to the court of Queendom where he will work for one of the two duelling Queens, who recognises the preciousness of his ability. There Roger will grow up, fall in love whilst getting in the middle of witch hunting, politics and court intrigue. At the centre of it all, the mysterious story of infamous Soulvine Moor, where his mother died and where he has vowed to go one day to search for her soul.

I quite enjoyed the plot of the novel – or rather, the elements of the plot. To start with the idea of the land of the Dead as a place that mimics the location of the living and where souls are restful and soon after death lose touch with previous life. This means, that for example every time Roger crosses he is limited by both time and location – if someone died far away from where he is for example chances are he won’t find that soul unless he crosses over close to that same location. Similarly if someone died months or even days before, that soul would be in peace and not able to converse which adds a very specific time frame for him to cross over and talk to someone; but also it is an interesting piece of information he does not usually share with others that are trying to exploiting it and he uses it to his advantage.

On top of that, I am a sucker for political intrigue such as the one going on in Queendom and the (still unsolved) mystery of Soulvine Moor was very intriguing. However, these are all plotlines that are interesting on their own but they don’t quite work well when all put together or in the way they are executed.

Everything moves way too fast and the author never spends a lot of time examining or exploring these points in depth. When I thought I was going to get the hang of Queendom for example, Roger moves away from the court in a Quest for his One True Love. It also doesn’t help that up until making this one (stupid) decision, Roger stumbles his way around mostly as an observer that is a rant for the next section.

Thea: I love the IDEA of the plot – as Ana says, there are many wonderful threads here, the fate of a queendom, Roger’s past and true abilities/destiny, the mystery of Soulvine Moor, a romance, etc. But while all these ideas sound great and are wonderful in theory, on paper they never lived up to their full potential. No, scratch that – they never even lived up to half of their full potential. My problems with Crossing Over are twofold: the writing/execution of the story and the bland characters (I’ll get to that later).

In terms of writing style, Ms. Kendall’s book feels very much like a first novel – there’s a lot of repetition (“my mother in the lavender dress” was one I found particularly annoying), abrupt story shifts, and hastily “resolved” plot threads. For example, while so much time is spent on Roger’s many trips to the country of the dead, or in reference to clothing on courtiers, the final climactic battle scene is ridiculously rushed, and a certain key revelation about Roger’s mother is given a single sentence. Huh? I cannot tell you how much this bothers me, this lopsided, lack of story prioritization. What’s even more infuriating about the whole thing is that Ms. Kendall has excellent plot elements and story ideas here – the level of writing to convey these ideas simply isn’t there.

On the Characters:

Ana: I read the book in basically one sitting and as aforementioned I enjoyed certain aspects of the story very much but once I closed the book I had the strangest feeling and I thought about it for days after reading and the feeling was: hollowness. I felt hollow after reading this book and the reason behind this feeling is that I was unable to feel any sympathy or connection with its main character which, seeing as how his is the sole point of view in the entire book, is problematic to say the least. I didn’t like his voice or the execution of his arc and I am trying to put my finger on WHY and here are some of the reasons:

I am not sure the character sounds as a 14 year old. His voice was so uneven – at times he sounded way younger sometimes way older. At times he is capable of keen observations about all the intrigue but these are never backed up by a reasonable explanation as to how he reached that opinion other than the ubiquitous “just know”. The “just know” has recently become one of my greatest gripes when reading because to me it reeks of lazy characterisation.

At the same time that he is supposed to be a keen observer, he makes the most idiotic decisions, the greatest one is when he decides he LOVES this girl, Lady Cecilia and then follows her when she flees the court and that is the impetus for the second half of the book. The thing is I am sure we are supposed to feel for Roger and his inappropriate love but it is hard to do so when he himself describes his lady love as a childish girl. His love for her felt extremely artificial and merely an excuse to get the story moving.

And then there are the erections. *sighs*

Roger kept having erections at the sight of girls. I GET that this is a teenage boy but these came at odd times, out of nowhere and felt really jarring, almost as a way to aid establishing that he is a teenage boy. “hey look my character is a boy, he gets erections”.

The secondary characters have a similar fate. Cecilia is hardly more than a childish, flirtatious ninny and Maggie the kitchen maid (YES, another love triangle) was a little bit more interesting but she loves Roger for no reason I can think of (similar to lack of reason for why Roger loves Cecilia.)

Frustrating.

Thea: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem.

I’m sorry, but I have to agree with Ana on all counts. The random erections thing really cracked me up. It should be like a drinking game or something, shouldn’t it? Oh, there Roger’s “member” goes again! SHOTGUN THAT BEER! (and that “member” joke? It’s actually in the book. He refers to his “Little Roger” as his member) I love it when teenagers in novels – YA or otherwise – are written as believable characters, and erections/sexuality is definitely part of this. I hate it when authors gloss over any mention of sex (e.g. the oddly sexless Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl), but to go completely the other way and throw in the random stiffies at very strange places in the plot? This does not a genuine character make. (And if we’re talking about, I found it strange that Roger would get these erections and yet never: 1. Masturbate; 2. Suffer any of the ill effects (embarrassment or physical discomfort) of non-release – in fact, these erections seem to disappear quite suddenly (or else no one can see these boners? I don’t know).

But on a more serious note, the characters were simply…bland. Roger (a weird name choice)’s voice fluctuated and I never got a true feel for his age, as Ana mentions, but what irked me the most about his character is how disinterested he seemed in his singular ability to cross over. Given that it is the single skill that has kept him alive, he doesn’t seem all that interested in what he does or if there is any greater implications to his singular talent.

Beyond that, I, like Ana, also felt frustrated with Roger’s choices in the book – his “love” for Cecila and his strange choice to abandon the queendom in its most desperate hour to follow her (the love didn’t seem very convincing to begin with) being the most egregious of these offenses. Also, at one point in the book I’m not quite clear why Roger chooses to tell the lies he does (to those in the realm of the dead)…it was all very strange and unnecessary.

Even with the other characters in the book, I felt similarly disinterested. Cecilia, Roger’s “love” is quite beautiful, and yet also manipulative…but she’s a simpleton and possibly something else that is never explained fully? I had hopes that Cecilia might be pulling some crazy con on the Queendom, trying to wrest the crown into her own paws and playing at idiocy…and yet, that was sadly not the case. And I still don’t know what was so important about her as the medicine woman kept alluding to in the latter portions of the book.

The only character that broke this malaise was Queen Caroline – the ruthless younger queen with her dreams of taking the throne from her aging mother. But is that one character enough to save the book from its exhausting banality? Not really.

Final Thoughts, Observation and Rating:

Ana: Even though I can’t say that Crossing Over is an entirely bad book, I don’t think I can say that it is a good book either. I finished it feeling underwhelmed and unimpressed, and I don’t think I have enough reasons for picking up the sequel.

Thea: I have to echo Ana’s feelings exactly. I finished Crossing Over, and while there are undeniably wonderful ideas in the book, the execution of the novel itself left me bored and disinterested. I want to believe that the next book will be better…but given how limited my reading time is to begin with, I can’t justify reading the sequel either.

Rating:

Thea: 5 – Meh

Ana:5 – Meh

Title: Seth Baumgartner’s Love Manifesto

Author: Eric Luper

Genre: Contemporary YA

Publisher Balzer + Bray
Publication Date: June 8, 2010
Hardcover: 304 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

Seth Baumgartner just had the worst day of his life.

His girlfriend dumped him (at Applebee’s), he spied his father on a date with a woman who is not his mother (also at Applebee’s!), and he lost his fourth job of the year. It’s like every relationship he cares about is imploding, and he can’t figure out what’s going on.

To find answers, Seth decides to start an anonymous podcast called The Love Manifesto, exploring “what love is, why love is, and why we’re stupid enough to keep going back for more.” Things start looking up when Seth gets a job at a golf club with his hilarious and smut-minded best friend, Dimitri, and Dimitri’s sister, Audrey. With their help, Seth tracks down his father’s mystery date, hits the most infamous bogey in the history of golf, and discovers that sometimes love means eating the worst chicken-salad sandwich you can ever imagine.

Why did I read the book: This book was on my radar for a few months. I liked the cover, the blurb and since I am on a contemporary YA kick, it was a no brainer.

How did I get the book: This was one of the books I most wanted to get when at BEA. I got a signed copy.

Review:

Seth Baumgartner is not having a good day. It starts with his girlfriend Veronica breaking up with him at Applebee’s, where he also sees his father having lunch and being too close to a woman-who-is-not-his-mother and it ends with him being fired from yet another job this summer – which doesn’t sit well with his very successful parents, especially his father. Seth then finds a new job at his Golf Club, where he is also training, alongside his best friend Dimitri, for the upcoming father-son competition. Meanwhile, Seth nurtures a broken heart and the horrible responsibility of knowing about his father which could lead to a broken home and that’s what makes him start a Love Manifesto podcast – where he anonymously, talks about the reasons why he loves Veronica and the steps he takes to investigate his father’s affair.

On the surface, Seth Baumgartner’s Love Manifesto has some really interesting ideas and themes: young love (losing it and finding it again), how to deal with a cheating father, golf (have I ever read a YA book where the kid plays golf? No.), podcasting. In reality, the book just left me cold ad I am struggling right now to even remember parts of it even though I finished reading it three days ago. However, I do remember critical parts that did not sit well with me.

For example, Seth lies to Dimitri about why they are running around town following his father. The reason why he doesn’t tell his best friend is that he thinks that 30 years from now:

“Regardless of what happens between now and then – what schools I’ve gone to, what degrees I’ve gotten, or how many millions of dollars I’ve made – all that Dimitri will think about is how I’m that guy whose father cheated on his mother”

Really? That’s the reasoning? The guy is your best friend in the world and that is how you see his friendship? This is only one of the reasons why I couldn’t connect with Seth (and ultimately with the story). The themes of the book present a great opportunity to explore heartbreak, sadness, angst over parent’s marriage and to some extent this is done moderately well but right when things seemed to take a turn for the Great, something would happen to pull me out of the story. The example above is one of them; but there’s more: Seth started podcasting reasons why he loved Veronica and there were more than 100 and you know what? They are pretty cool, sweet reasons too including how she “got” him and or he “got” her. But then Veronica becomes a bitch and soon (way too soon) Seth is over her and falling for someone else. I do understand that we are talking about teenagers and love can be ephemeral – but the build up, the heartbreak, the reasons for loving her just become moot points.

Seth running around following his father and sleuthing sounded pretty silly too and what is the point of having an “anonymous” podcast if you will talk about things that will make it way too easy for people to know who you are? Those are only small things but to me, they don’t make a lot sense and bothered me. Plus, the book is supposed to be funny. I can tell the author really tries to, and Dimitri is supposed to be THE funny sidekick. But I did not laugh once and admittedly it is generally pretty easy to make me laugh.

Bottom line: it is not that the book is bad, but it is only…adequate. Harsh? Probably, but with so many good, awesome books out there, with so many waiting for me in my TBR, “adequate” is not going to cut it.

Notable Quotes/Parts: I earmarked this quote because I think it is a clear mark of the disengagement between the book and I. I am pretty sure this is supposed to be funny:

“Dimitri is not what I’d call fat, but he’s definitely carrying around some spare pounds. Let’s just say that if there were a sudden famine, he wouldn’t be the first to go – that is, unless all the skinny people got together and ate him”

Additional Thoughts: Two of the main themes of the book have been better explored (in my opinion) in two other books I read (and loved) this year. Mind you, these are not more “of the same”. Quite the contrary, each of these books could not be more different, but they are similar enough to make me think of them whilst reading Seth Baumgartner’s Love Manifesto.

One is Delia Ephron’s wonderful The Girl With The Mermaid Hair

in which the protagonist’s father is also caught cheating. However, the way it is done, how the protagonist found out, the repercussions were truly, really heartbreaking. Also, there was no coup out or “explanation” for cheating (or presumed cheating) here – the father was indeed, a total sleazeball.

The other is An Abundance of Katherines by John Green,

in which the protagonist is ditched by his girlfriend and has an overweight, best friend who is in this case, TRULY hilarious. This book made me laugh so freaking much, plus it is a John Green novel so it comes with many layers of UTTER AWESOME.

Verdict: Seth Baumgartner’s Love Manifesto has an interesting premise and universal themes that could have been fodder for a great book but its uninspired writing, unrelatable main character make for a merely adequate novel.

Rating: 5. Meh – Take it or leave it

Reading Next:Friend Is Not A Verb by Daniel Ehrenhaft

Title:Wicked becomes You

Author: Meredith Duran

Genre: Historical Romance

Publisher: Pocket
Publication Date: April 27 2010
Paperback: 416 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand Alone

She’s been burned not once but twice by London’s so-call ed gentlemen . . .Gwen Maudsley is pretty enough to be popular, and plenty wealthy, too. But what she’s best known and loved for is being so very, very nice. When a cad jilts her at the altar—again—the scandal has her outraged friends calling for blood. Only Gwen has a different plan. If nice no longer works for her, then it’s time to learn to be naughty. Happily, she knows the perfect tutor—Alexander Ramsey, her late brother’s best friend and a notorious rogue.So why won’t a confirmed scoundrel let her be as bad as she wants to be?Unbeknownst to Gwen, Alex’s aloof demeanor veils his deepest unspoken desire. He has no wish to see her change, nor to tempt himself with her presence when his own secrets make any future between them impossible. But on a wild romp from Paris to the Riviera, their friendship gives way to something hotter, darker, and altogether more dangerous. With Alex’s past and Gwen’s newly unleashed wildness on a collision course, Gwen must convince Alex that his wickedest intentions are exactly what she needs.

Why did I read this book: I heart Meredith Duran’s books. I think she is one of the top romance novelists writing today.

How did I get this book: I requested a review copy from the publisher.

Review:

There are those books that make me think more about the art of reading and about the act of reviewing than any other and Wicked Becomes You is one of them. What is it that I do when I sit down to write a review – how do my biases work for or against a novel and how do these ultimately matter as I read and when I have to express them clearly when writing a review.

Thus, this review is going to be more of an exercise of examining my reading and reviewing as a result of those biases.

Bias number 1: I adore Meredith Duran’s writing. I loved every single book she’s written with every fibre of my being. I think she is a sophisticated writer whose prose is beautiful in itself and whose characters are complex and extremely well developed.

Bias number 2: I utterly dislike the specific tropes of this novel and if it wasn’t for bias number 1, I doubt I would have read it at all.

Bias number 2 trumped bias number 1 completely and as a result I didn’t enjoy reading this book even though I wanted so much to love it.

The blurb does a pretty good service laying out the premise of the novel. Society darling Gwen Maudsley is jilted at the altar and finds that the fact that she is probably going to be an outcast now, totally liberating. Deciding that she’s had enough of being Miss Congeniality, she strives for the title of Miss Wicked. Alex Ramsey, is her late brother’s best friend, someone who has vowed to see to her comfort. In the eyes of society he is a rogue, although he is not one, really. He does have some issues about being free of shackles and makes his living travelling around and even though he is attracted to Gwen, he tries to stay away because he knows that being too close to her would result on losing this freedom.

They both end up in Paris at the same time and from there they travel to Monte Carlo going from friends to lovers, and then they live happily ever after. The plot is pretty simple and one that I have seen many times before which is not the problem at all. Meredith Duran has proven over and again, that a good writer can turn a well-used trope into something unique.

To wit: Wicked Becomes You is a perfectly fine, standard Romance Novel; and that is one of the problems I found with it. Because I am used to reading Meredith Duran’s novels which so far have been way more than standardised novels. To me, they were extraordinary and Wicked Becomes You reads as an average novel. I asked myself: is this fair? To hold this against previous novels? I even discussed it with Thea and we came to the conclusion that it is not about being fair. We have to take into account expectations, how one holds the author’s work in esteem and that books do not exist in a clean vacuum of nothingness.

Mind you, it is not that the book is badly written – I find that this is an impossibility when it comes to this author. My copy of the book is replete with earmarked pages. It is not that is badly plotted, the story flows perfectly from points A to B via C even though I thought that the secondary plotline regarding Alex and his investigation of how his brother sold one of their estates to be unnecessary.

The thematic centre of the novel is Freedom. Freedom to love, to be who one is, to do as one pleases, to come and go. That’s what ultimately moves the characters. Gwen wants a family to love but the freedom to choose and the freedom to be wicked if she pleases. Alex wants to be free and is afraid that love would come with too much attachment. Which brings me to why I did not love the novel. The romance is well-written and has an interesting plot, but I was not emotionally engaged with the characters and their motivations.

Alex for example, irritated me to no end. He came across as patronising and condescending towards Gwen and at times I thought he was more interested in teaching her lessons than effectively winning her heart. (The prig). The reasoning behind his “issues” stem basically from being loved too much as a child and smothered by his family. I will admit that there is a good reason for that and psychologically speaking, I guess his trauma may well have believable grounds but to me, it read as silly and inconsistent (he so obviously loved his brother, sister and Gwen and her brother) instead of complex. Although one can certainly argue both ways.

Then, there is Gwen and we return to Bias number 2: the trope of a girl trying to be wicked. I have NOTHING against a woman, trying to be free of society’s rules in order to live a fuller life, engaging in sexual activity, absolutely nothing. I root for characters like that. It is just this is one difficult trope to write because it usually lands the poor female character in TSTL Situations. Gwen, is up to a certain point, a believable, relatable, intelligent character who ascertains her position in society by manipulation, discipline and smarts. I believe in this character’s intellect but when she arrives in Paris in her pursue of a “wicked” lifestyle it is a though her brain takes a break. She tries to be daring but comes across as stupid: in one scene she overdresses with too much make up, huge earrings, a very daring dress –the very description of the way she dresses makes it plain that it is overkill. My gripe is that, as an intelligent character that is used to being in society I am sure that THAT Gwen would have known when she is dressed as “daring” and when she is dressed like a “clown”. One of the characters even muses that it is as though she went shopping in a brothel. And yet she is clueless in that scene. Similarly one other scene puts her in direct danger when she goes off alone with a man she just met in the middle of a debauched party at the Moulin Rouge!

My point is: there is a difference between being “wicked” and being “stupid” and I think a character who is portrayed as intelligent and smart should know the difference in order to be consistent, even being the innocent that she is. That marred my enjoyed of the novel and my level of engagement with the book varied greatly. I will admit that there were wonderfully romantic parts but overall this was a miss to me. And this is not easy for me to say because of bias number 1. My heart lies bleeding at my feet as I finish this review.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

One foot into the lobby, Alex came to a stop. Mrs. Beecham had assured them that Gwen was flattened by grief, but here she was picking her way down the stairs, an oversized valise clutched to her chest. More to the point, she had an envelope between her teeth.
The sight arrested him. It seemed historic. He could probably sell tickets to it. Proper Gwen Maudsley, carrying a letter in her mouth for convenience’s sake.
In fact, now that she’d embraced creativity, he could think of several other uses he might suggest for her lips.
It was a hot, predictable thought, useless and thoroughly irritating. So many willing, complex women existed in the world. Gwen, on the other hand, was determined to be agreeable. A more boring goal, he could not imagine. It said nothing good of him that he found himself watching her all the same.
So turn away, he thought. She had paused mid-step, and now was contorting her shoulder, screwing it up toward her mouth, to catch the edge of the letter. This leverage, she used to readjust her toothy grip. Awkward move, quite unlike her. How long since he’d seen her so close? Last June? Yes — in the garden at Heaton Dale. The breeze had carried away her shawl, and the late afternoon light falling through the oak leaves had strewn a delicate filigree of gold across her smooth, pale shoulders—
Well, yes, she’d always been pale, hadn’t she? Many girls were, nothing special there. Her current pallor probably owed to shock. Difficult morning she’d had, being jilted in front of five hundred people; if she realized that someone now witnessed her indecorum, the mortification would probably serve her the death blow. He stepped backward, out of view from the lobby.
A panicked squeak reached his ears.
He leaned back into the foyer in time to spot her bobbling. She caught her balance, barely, but that valise was almost too large for her to see over. Another round of toothy acrobatics, and she was going to fall on her head before she made it to the landing.
Muttering a curse beneath his breath, he approached the staircase. “May I help?”
“Oh!” The valise plummeted to Gwen’s feet. The envelope pursued a more leisurely descent, floating down to the first step, glancing off its edge, then sliding down several more. It was addressed, but he could not make out the name.
“Alex!” Gwen’s large brown eyes rose from the envelope, which was nearer now to him than her; as she gave him a wide smile, he had the curious impression that she meant to distract him from this knowledge. “How do you do this afternoon? So glad to see you back in town!”
This good cheer seemed a bit unlikely, even from her. “I’m tolerably well,” he answered slowly. Her eyes looked a bit bloodshot. Someone needed to rub the color back into her cheeks, but not him. Some titled xenophobe would do it. He cleared his throat. “And how are you?”
She set a slipper atop the valise and lifted her chin. The posture put him in mind of explorers staking their sovereign’s flag in new ground. “I’m splendid,” she declared.

You can read the rest of the excerpt here.

Additional Thoughts: I may not have liked this one but I loved every single one Meredith Duran’s novels so far. If you are not a romance reader and would like to try awesome historical romance novels, you could do no wrong if you start with either The Duke of Shadows or Bound by Your Touch. Please, please don’t let these god-awful covers put you off.

If you are a romance reader and haven’t read Meredith Duran: WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Verdict: Ojectively speaking, this is a perfectly fine romance novel which unfortunately, from an emotional point of view,failed to engage me.

Rating: 5. Meh.

Reading Next: The Prince of Mist By Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Title:Steampunk

Author: edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer with contributions by Michael Chabon / Neal Stephenson / James P. Blaylock / Joe R. Lansdale / Mary Gentle / Ted Chiang / Michael Moorcock / Jay Lake / Molly Brown / Stepan Chapman / Ian R. MacLeod / Rachel E. Pollock / Paul Di Filippo / Rick Klaw / Jess Nevins / Bill Baker

Genre: Steampunk

Stand alone or series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Publication Date: June 2008
Paperback: 432 pages

Steampunk is Victorian elegance and modern technology: steam-driven robots, souped-up stagecoaches, and space-faring dirigibles fueled by gaslight romance, mad scientists, and oh-so-trim waistcoats. It’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Wizard of Oz, and The Golden Compass. Replete with whimsical mechanical wonders and bold adventurers, this riveting anthology lovingly collects classic steampunk stories, pop-culture fueled discussions of steampunk, and essential recommended reading lists for the discerning steampunk fan.

From the editors of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases and The New Weird, this is steampunk. Hang on tight.

Why did I read the book: This one is considered THE definitive Steampunk anthology

How did I get the book: Bought

Review:

Steampunk is a collection of articles and stories pertaining to Steampunk. The three articles contained in the anthology seem to have been written specially for the collection whereas the stories have all been published before and are collected here as examples of “Best Of” that the genre has to offer.

I guess the question that needs to be asked is this: does the anthology succeed in its purpose to collect the best of the genre? I am….undecided.

I am not too sure that the unsuspecting reader, the one who never read Steampunk, would come away after reading this collection, wanting to read more. I rather think that the best public for the anthology are those who already enjoy Steampunk and want to know more by exploring the short story format or by reading one of the books that are considered an “Essential” reading. In that sense, I consider myself one of those and I am glad I did read it but I can’t really say I liked the majority of what I read.

The three articles for example are rather good. Introduction: The Nineteenth Century Roots of Steampunk by Jess Nevins is my favorite, an interesting essay about the roots of Steampunk going back to dime novels of the 19th century and the difference between a first “wave” of Steampunk fiction and a second “wave”. The other two are The Steam-Driven Time Machine: A Pop Culture Survey by Rick Claw which offers an insight about genre and its different format (books, movies, fashion, etc) and how the media has picked up on it and The Essential Sequential Steampunk: A Modest Survey of the Genre within the Comic Book Medium by Bill Baker takes a look at the genre within comics and graphic novel format. I do have to say though, as much as the articles are all good, they are not particularly insightful in a ”not to be missed” way. Any information provided and collected can easily be found by doing a simple Google search about the genre.

As for the stories themselves. This is where things get really complicated. Some of them are really, really good but amongst hose there are a couple I am not sure I would even consider Steampunk. Cyperpunk (such Neal Stephenson’s Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Coast) Gaslight Romance, yes. Steampunk? Perhaps not. In any case, admitting that all stories are a form of Steampunk – what do these stories say about the genre?

That there isn’t a clear definition, or a clear parameter to define it. Which is something I already knew but became set in stone after reading the anthology.

My favourite stories in the anthology are the lighter, more fun one ones like Victoria by Paul Di Filippo. Part of his Steampunk Trilogy of novella, this one was a delight to read. It tells the story of a how a scientist is able to genetically modify a newt into a woman with a tremendous sexual appetite. He calls her Victoria and she looks a bit like Queen Victoria. When the real Queen goes missing, the prime minister engages his help to substitute one woman for the other while they search for the queen. It is a great Victorian set story full of political intrigue and scandalous behaviour. The Selene Gardening Society is a whimsical comedy of manners in which a group of Victorian ladies decide to send the excess of garbage to the moon – which will, according to them eventually make the atmosphere habitable for humans. Another favourite but more in a darker streak was Seventy-Two Letters by Ted Chiang applying Kaballa and Gollems to a Steampunk setting. There is also a small except (3 pages or so long) of the very good Warlod of the Air by Michael Moorcock,a book considered to be proto-Steampunk. The excerpt is so small and so obviously part of a larger story that I don’t understand its inclusion in the anthology at all.

The other stories were a complete miss for me. Either because the concepts were not fully explored like Jay Lake’s The God-Clown is Near with the idea of “moral” Clowns and one being built to pass judgment lacks context – it seems to be part of one the author’s “world” but in here it just floats in space. Similarly, The Giving Mouth Ian R. MacLeod, a medieval Steampunk is beautifully written
but also lacking gravitas and a clear explanation for what the heck is going on. A Sun in the Attic by Mary Gentle on the other hand has some of the worst dialogue I ever read even if might have an interesting premise (positive and negative outcome of scientific discoveries in a polygamous society). And so on and so forth, cardboard characters, lack of a cohesive or interesting story afflict the remaining tales.

My least favourite (to put it very mildly) of them all is definitely The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel by Joe R. Lansdale. The premise is actually pretty good. The Time Traveller of from H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine travelled so much that he disrupted the time-space continuum and somehow ended up a vampire. Sounds good right? Except the entire story is an excuse for gratuitous violence and an overwhelming obsession with … “ass”. To wit, in every single page there is a scene that contains either rape, impaling, haemorrhoids or ass fu**ing (including a scene where the titular character ass f**ks an ape) all in very graphic details. I am not a prude, I have no problem with the word itself nor am I averse to violence per se if it has a context or a point. But the entire story is completely pointless and by the end of it, I wanted to remove my eyes out of my skull and bleach them.

Ultimately the anthology made me reflect about what my greatest problem with the genre is. I have come to find that Steampunk is a mish-mash of good and bad (like any other genre, really) but above all the most important issue I have is that Steampunk is absolutely great in theory and with its premises but the majority of its execution misses the mark completely. Because it is a genre that lacks a clear definition, I find myself constantly finding stories and books that are defined as Steampunk but which are not. Or in the case of this particular anthology, find that the articles about Steampunk are far more interesting and better than the stories themselves.

This dichotomy between theory x execution and how the former seems to be more of a reality than the latter really is what keeps me going – I want to find more and more examples of good Steampunk execution and shall not rest until I do. Until then, I do not think this one is the “Definitive” Steampunk anthology although it is definitely a good representation of the genre as it currently stands. Take that as you will.

BUT IS IT STEAMPUNK: YES. Some stories do fit what I call Steampunk better but overall yes, definitely a Steampunk collection.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: If I had to pick one story to quote would have to be Victoria. I loved the inside joke the author played with one of most famous (or infamous) art critics of his time, John Ruskin (the man who “discovered” the Pre-Raphaelites) and how he supposedly had a problem with women’s pubic hair (seiro7slyt) and never consummated his marriage to Effie Gray (who later married one of my favourites painters, Millais). The source of his “problem” may well have been Victoria, the newt. Awesome. (yes, I am geek, I KNOW THAT).

Additional Thoughts: For another taste of Steampunk short stories, there is also another anthology currently published:

Extraordinary Engines: The Definitive Steampunk Anthology collects original stories by Stephen Baxter, Eric Brown, Paul Di Filippo, Hal Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Jay Lake, Ian R. MacLeod, Michael Moorcock, Robert Reed, Lucius Shepard, Brian Stableford, Jeff VanderMeer and more.

It also seems that Ann and Jeff Vandermeer have another one in the works as we speak.

Verdict: A collection of stories that try to represent the genre, with some hits and a lot of misses. I would only recommended it to the more seasoned Steampunk reader.

Rating: 5 , meh, take it or leave it.

Reading Next: Here There Be Monsters by Meljean Brook

Title: Year of the Horse

Author: Justin Allen

Genre: Young Adult, Western, Adventure, Fantasy

Publisher: The Overlook Press
Publication Date: October 2009
Hardcover: 352 pages

A thrill-ride adventure novel capturing the adventure, mystery, legend, and lore of America

Year of the Horse is literary fantasy at its very best‹a novel that delves into our myths, legends, hopes, and fears; a coming-of-age fable set in our fondly remembered (if often fictional) past‹an adventure more than capable of setting your hair on end.

Year of the Horse tells the story of Yen Tzu-lu, a child of Chinese immigrants unwillingly pressed into service by a gang of roughnecks bent on stealing a gold mine from a shadowy villain deep in the western wilderness. With Tzu-lu as our guide, we experience a landscape of legend, stand toe-to-toe with those larger-than- life heroes and villains of our shared American mythos, and learn the inescapable facts that have both enriched and plagued our nation from its inception.

Resonating with echoes of Mark Twain, Larry McMurtry, and J. K. Rowling, this is a book of fabulous adventure and deep resonance. Allen gives readers a picture of how America sees itself, and in so doing he offers up both a heroic vision of the past and hope for the future.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did we get this book: Review Copies from the author

Why did we read this book: Actually, we were contacted by author out of the blue a few months back – after our review of The Left Hand of Darkness, Justin Allen thought we might be interested in his book…and he couldn’t be more right. After reading the synopsis for this book (diverse cast! Western setting – and y’all know how much we love Westerns! Fantasy-style quest/adventure!) and seeing it appear on “Most Underrated YA” lists, both of us were hooked.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Ana: I was tremendously excited about reading this book.The author’s pitch to introduce his novel to us was quite frankly, made of awesome. And, in theory Year of the Horse sounds great. A western with fantasy elements with an all-inclusive cast of characters sounded just like the book Thea and I would love. And it starts well enough with the right amount of mystery, a writing style that appealed to me all against the backdrop of Old West. But as the pages pile on, the story, the characters, never truly progress beyond the first impression. Although I enjoyed some aspects of it, I can’t say I truly enjoyed the novel and that is a shame because the potential is right there.

Thea: I agree with Ana. I’d like to start out by saying that, on paper, Year of the Horse has everything that I could ask for in a novel. A historically detailed western setting, a multiracial cast, a traveling supernatural-tinged adventure tale in pursuit of the devil…it’s all good stuff. Except that it doesn’t quite work. There’s a lot to like in Year of the Horse, but it never truly comes together and lives up to the potential. Though the setting is beautifully and lovingly drawn, its characters never gain life beyond their token labels, and the supernatural element is sketchy at best. I still enjoyed the novel, but can’t help feeling disappointed.

On the Plot:

Ana: Tzu-lu lives with his mother and grandfather who together run their shop. One day, a famous gunslinger named Jack Straw walks into the shop and has a mysterious conversation with Lu’s grandfather. The result is that Lu is to accompany Jack on a cross country expedition to the West. Their aim is to take repossession of a Gold fortune stolen from its rightful owner, a man called MacLemore, who is paying for the expedition. Together with Jack, MacLemore and his daughter, a former Slave called Henry, a Mexican called Chino, Lu travels to the other side of his world and on the way, comes across adventure, perils, Indian and cowboys, Mormons and even perhaps, the Devil himself.

As much as promise as the book holds, a promise of high adventure and of coming of age for Lu, the plot never really takes flight. The story is episodic at best, with many encounters with potentially interesting people coming and going without much consequence. Even though the setting is quite vivid and there is a certain flair to Allen’s old Western, details – especially of the Fantastic variety are often lacking and nothing is really, truly explored. As I read, I was continuously met with boredom and I will admit to grievous sin of skimming when it became clear I would not be missing a lot if I did.

I would describe it thus: a two-dimensional view of America circa 19th Century that at first glance provide an interesting even imaginative panorama. However it lacks the most important thing in the world to make it three dimensional and truly engaging story: depth. The characters are stereotypes (but more on that below), the story lacks action and pacing and it ends with a patronising, patriotic “message” that shows that the author might have been more interested in preaching than telling a good story. Which, as I said is a shame because the story had potential and so does the author: the prose is quite good actually.

Thea: Unfortunately, I have to agree with Ana. Year of the Horse has the elements of a good story – as we’ve both said above, it sounds good in theory. But in practice? It just doesn’t quite gel together. The adventure of this band of travelers across a changing American landscape is episodic in nature – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I actually kind of liked how each chapter felt like a new short story, meeting different characters and locales before moving on and leaving them behind. The scenery and history of the novel are textured and rich, and there’s no denying that Mr. Allen has the setting down pat. Everything from bridling horses to burning coffee to learning how to fire a gun and kill deer is covered in genuine detail.

But…all this also meant that the story overall felt like it had little direction or purpose. Yes, we know that this band of heroes is out to reclaim a fortune in gold, but that goal feels hollow. I found myself drifting off when reading, asking myself what’s the point? These episodic adventures do not really work to do anything, and while the setting is great, it reads like so much filler. The fantasy/supernatural element feels tacked on with vague details and skimpy literary allusions (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, for example). And, I have to agree with Ana – the ending makes an uncomfortable stab at patriotism (what it means to be an “American”) that doesn’t sit well with me, and likely will alienate other readers – especially non-American ones. Year of the Horse had some good ideas, ingredients that separately sound like they’d make a good dish, but tossed together are strangely bland and unsatisfying.

On the Characters:

Ana: This is really where the book commits its more serious offense. And again, it is all about theory and execution. In theory the idea of a multi-ethnic cast of character is awesome. I am all for that – it is both great and interesting to see Hispanic, Black, Chinese, White characters all together plus also, a Woman all sharing the pages in harmony. It is beautiful when it is not trite. Because the execution fails the idea entirely. By trying too much to have every single race and genre represented the author ended up doing what I am sure he was trying to avoid: because none of them have really any depth whatsoever they all became stereotypes. Here you have the Chinese Boy, there you have The Gunslinger, The Mexican Dude, The Former Slave, and The Spunky girl. All of the characters are non-entities most of all the main character, Lu. He is bland and blank, functioning merely as the eyes of the narrator from which to see this world.

Lu never really came alive to me probably he is the epitome of a re-active character (as opposed to an active one). He never asked questions: why is he told to leave with Jack? Why must HE go? Later on he is told he is to be the explosive expert and never thinks twice about it. It is pointed that he is so because of his father whose life seems to have been interesting by the amount of people all over the world who knows his name and yet THAT is never truly explored either. For a coming of age story, Lu doesn’t really change that much or learn a lot (expect if you count the lessons on cooking, shooting, riding, etc – this is the kind of “learning” he does).

Thea: As much as it pains me to say it, I again have to agree with Ana. The biggest problem with the book did not lie with its stilted plotting, but with its stock, cardboard characters. One of the things that excited me about Year of the Horse – the main thing, in fact – was its cast. I wanted to read a western novel from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant. But Tzu-Lu (or rather, Lu) is flat, uninspired, and besides the initial introduction to him and the occasional conversation in Chinese, might as well have been Irish or Native American or a martian. He’s the epitome of the “blank narrator” – without much in the way of personality, inner dialogue of any sort, and he neither questions nor grows over the course of the book. His status as a Chinese immigrant and his culture play a negligible role in the story (and when his ethnicity does show up as a point in the book, it’s awkward and forced). He never felt like a real, genuine, flesh and blood character.

The same can be said for the other characters in the book; they are all mere caricatures. Gunslinger, tomboy, evil Yankee, token Mexican, token Black character. These are stereotypes, two-dimensioned renderings that verge dangerously into uncomfortable territory (unintentional though it may be).

Final Thoughts, Observations and Rating:

Ana: I wish I could say I enjoyed the novel but the lack of strong, in-depth characters and the boring, episodic plot made this one a total miss for me. I also need to mention that the ending and its message just did not sit well with me at all. Not because I disagree with it, because I obviously don’t but because it sounded to me like I was reading something that had a “and the moral of the story is…” and I just do not appreciate being preached at.

Thea: Year of the Horse is wonderfully detailed in terms of physical and historical landscaping, but deeply marred by simplistic, stock characters and a jolted plot. I enjoyed parts of this novel, but not nearly so much as I wish I could have enjoyed it. It’s not a terrible book, but it’s not a good one either.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the official excerpt:

“A Bill Comes Due”

The storm must have blown itself out some­time dur­ing the night, because when Lu woke up the next morn­ing all was bright and beau­ti­ful once more.

At first he didn’t know where he was, or how he’d got there. It took a minute for him to recall the pre­vi­ous night’s light­ning storm, and the flight down through the steep­est, deep­est and most vertigo-inducing canyon in all the Ter­ri­to­ries. They sure didn’t call it the Hell Mouth for noth­ing. See­ing the canyon from above, under the mid-afternoon sun, had been a rev­e­la­tion. Who­ever knew rocks could be so gor­geous? But being inside it at night, when a storm hit, had been ter­ri­fy­ing. In the rain and wind, Lu had quickly fallen behind his group. It was darn scary being out there all alone. So when he found what he’d thought was a short cut, he took it. Remem­ber­ing back on that moment near choked him with guilt. They’d all said he was just a boy, not yet ready to shoul­der a man’s respon­si­bil­i­ties, and now he’d gone and proved them right.

Lu felt stiff and groggy as he pushed between his horse, Crash, and his mule, Lucky, and stum­bled out of the lit­tle cave. The sun was just begin­ning to peak over the walls of the canyon but already it was hot. He splashed through the pud­dles that had col­lected on the nar­row piece of ledge sur­round­ing the cave entrance, right to the edge of the precipice, and was shocked to see the river not even a hun­dred feet below. He was even more sur­prised when he glanced to his left and saw the very same red and burnt-orange nat­ural stone bridge he’d mar­veled at the morn­ing before, and with a path lead­ing up to it as surely as if it were the fin­ger of god point­ing out, with no uncer­tainty what-so-ever, exactly where he needed to go.

As he chewed a bit of pem­mi­can, Lu con­cocted a plan. He’d cross that bridge — if such a thing were even pos­si­ble — and then head north along the oppo­site wall of the canyon until he found his miss­ing friends. He laughed out loud as he imag­ined the looks on their faces. They’d be hun­gry, he guessed. Unless one of them had thought to squir­rel some­thing away in a sad­dle­bag, Lu had all the remain­ing food. Henry would bless the day he’d first met Lu. Chino would swear up a storm of hap­pi­ness. And Sadie would want to shower him with kisses. Even Jack Straw would for­give him for get­ting lost.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Rating:

Ana: 4 – bad but not without some merit

Thea: 5 – Take it or leave it

Reading Next: Girl Genius (Omnibus Vol. 1) by Phil and Kaja Foglio

Title: Tome of the Undergates

Author: Sam Sykes

Genre: Fantasy (Epic Fantasy)

Publisher: Gollancz (UK)
Publication date: April 15 2010
Hardcover: 612 pages

Stand alone or series: 1st in a planned trilogy

Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the shict despises most humans and the humans in the band are little better). When they’re not insulting each other’s religions they’re arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don’t go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates – a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don’t want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out. Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

Why did we read the book: Numerous reasons, really. First there is the incredible hype surrounding its release: Gollancz, the house that found and published Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, and Scott Lynch amongst others has publicly declared that this is THE book to read in 2010. We also happen to be quite friendly with Sam Sykes: Ana met the guy at the Gollancz party last year, he has guest blogged for us here during our Smugglivus celebration. In turn, Sam interviewed us at his blog, not to mention, we are avid followers of his on Twitter.

Needless to say, we really wanted to read this.

How did we get the book: Review Copies from Gollancz

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: When I started Tome of the Undergates, I was excited. Really excited. Like, really gorram, gonna pee my pants excited. With publisher name drops like Rothfuss, Abercrombie, and Lynch, the hype around Tome of the Undergates grew a life of its own – and I happily lapped it all up.

Unfortunately, as almost always seems to be the case with hype, the let-down was brutal. These publisher comparisons are more than a tad….licentious.

Though undeniably imaginative and featuring a band of characters that amusingly hate each other, I found myself growing tired, very quickly, with this book. Unnecessarily long, unfathomably repetitive, and ultimately pointless, I could not find much to love in Tome of the Undergates (and this hurts me to say, since Sam Sykes is a stand up guy).

Ana: Like Thea, I approached Tome of the Undergates with excitement and yes, high expectations coming not only from the hype surrounding its release but from experience as well: I have read a short story by the author in The Dragon Book anthology and well, I loved it.

Thea is right though, hype can be such a pernicious device when publicising a book, because it can create unreasonably high expectations and when those are not met, when the promise is not upheld, the fall from grace comes from a much higher place.
Regrettably, that’s exactly what happened to me when I finished the book for the same reasons that Thea stated. I did however enjoy it a little bit more than she did and that’s because I dig Sam Sykes’ writing style and I actually liked the characters – when they were on their own (more on that later).

On the plot:

Thea: The plot is simple – a group of adventurers (not to be confused with their more reputable siblings, mercenaries) is traveling across the seas on a mission to protect the equivalent of a high priest, and to find a hoity-toity sounding gateway. The pay sucks, but hey, they’re adventurers. Hence, they can’t really complain as they’re the dregs of the by-the-sword wage earning community. Then, their ship is attacked by pirates and a formidable demon. After hacking a lot of the crew down to so much mincemeat, the demon shakes down the emissary and steals the titled Tome of the Undergates – the book that will, well, unleash hell. Lenk and his band of…er, colleagues (they aren’t really “friends”) are given the opportunity to hunt the demon down and save the Tome and the world – for an exorbitant sum.

The biggest problem with Tome of the Undergates is how wasteful the book is. It is a tome in itself, yet despite its substantive girth, nothing really happens in this book. It is literally much ado about nothing. Allow me to explain with an example. The first two hundred pages of Tome of the Undergates details a single battle sequence.

That’s right. ONE battle. Two hundred pages.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – if this was some scintillating Steven Erikson or Paul Kearney style of epic battle or something. Unfortunately, it’s not. The first two hundred pages are just a lot of pointless, poorly-conceived action. The whole concept verges on the ludicrous; these characters are snarling at each other about how they are going to run away/kill each other, meanwhile what sounds like a never-ending pirate hoard is seizing the boat. (How the boat stays afloat in this chaos and supposed onslaught of destruction is quite beyond me) Even worse, however, is that this battle doesn’t even provide the visceral entertaining thrill that such hyperbolic carnage should otherwise offer! What begins as a mildly entertaining skirmish at sea becomes a protracted nightmare of bland tedium – and that, dear friends, is a hard thing to do when you’re racking up a body count.

This is basically the story of the entire book. Characters trade insults (humans suck! shict suck! I will stab you in the back!) – the same insults, mind you – over and over and over again, only to have that constant stream of monotony interrupted from time to time with sporadic, uninspired action and plot progression.

On the plus side, Sam Sykes does have a sense of humor which translates nicely in his writing, and there are the sporadic glints of promising plot seeds throughout the tome. Too bad the humor wears thin very quickly – there are only so many jokes one can make about making water – and while I very much liked the watery setting (as I do like the general feel for the cover), any interest sparked by a glimmer of background mythology, geography or politics was immediately squashed under the unrelenting weight of mindless tedium (humans suck! non-human monsters suck! KILL!).

There were also some odd, offsetting writing choices and awkward, cliched descriptions. For example, “Despite the oppressive heat, Kataria felt her blood run cold,” or “Asper could feel Lenk’s eyes with such intensity they threatened to crack her skull,” or “He had felt it once before, so keenly, when he held two bodies not his enemies’ in his arms, stared into their eyes as rain draped their faces in shrouds of fresh water,” or “The journal fell to the sand. The sound of it crashing upon the earth echoed through the dawn,” (how exactly does a book make a reverberating crashing sound on sand?), etc. You get the picture.

And for a book so obsessed with the most tedious of minutae, I have to remark that I only saw the characters eat and sleep once (on page 395). Just sayin’.

Ana: There isn’t much to be said about the plot – as it is very simple: there is a Tome which opens the doors to the undergates and this bunch of adventurers must try and rescue it before all hell breaks loose. Of course, there are complications (and unexpected twists) and gritty battles and adventure in their way to get the tome. For what it is, for what it proposes to do, yes, Tome of the Undergates is a wasteful book in need of serious editing.

Going back to the first two hundred pages and the infamous battle scene that lasts forever. When I started reading it, I actually enjoyed the opening sequence. I thought it was a clever, ingenious idea to start the book by showing us the characters doing what they do for a living – “here, there is a bunch of adventurers and this is what they do and this is who they are.” I liked that, I liked getting to know the main characters in the thick of battle and seeing what they thought, how they reacted to what was happening and to each other. But the novelty wore off really soon. How many pages does one really need for this exposition without becoming repetitive? Furthermore, the battle itself reads…not entirely right. Mostly because at times, the characters would start having lengthy dialogues in the midst of it all, cutting the action off.

After the battle ends, the story progresses a little bit further but again, it is bogged down by repetition – dialogue, motivations and even the bad guys, repeat themselves in their discourse. I grew tired of it all pretty soon. Which is a shame because as I mentioned before, I quite enjoy Sykes’ writing and sense of humour. Some of the interactions between the main characters were downright hilarious and amusing but again, how many times does one have to read the same thing to realise the author’s point: that the characters are together for reasons other than camaraderie and friendship.

Which brings me to my main point: is the book really about the search for the Tome of the Undergates? I don’t think so – to me, the book is about the characters and what motivates them. The second part of the novel reads more like a character piece than anything else and that was actually what kept me reading.

Through the fog of repetition and seemly pointless scenes I saw sparks of true brilliance. In my opinion, if you cut away about 100 pages from the opening battle scene, edit out another 100 pages or so here and there voila, this book would have been much better. The premise, the general idea of the book is good, the interesting background of different peoples (a dragon man? Cool! ), mythologies, religions and politics are there: it is just really, really hard to actually see and care about them.

Having said that, a couple of interesting developments towards the ending of the novel (again, character-driven ones) , guarantee that I will be back for seconds.

On the characters:

Thea: Like the plotting, the characters of Tome of the Undergates begin this journey as interesting, only to grow tiresome in a hurry. Our introduction to the characters is good fun, and I loved the initial wit and banter between the snarky adventurers – they clearly hate each other, which is a welcome novelty in a group of traveling adventurers. Lenk, as the leader, is clearly mentally unstable from the outset, struggling with the commanding voice in his head. Kataria (whom I cannot help but compare to Neytiri from James Cameron’s Avatar) is a strong, vocal character that discriminates and feels discriminated against by disgusting humans. There’s a pacifistic priestess, a hotshot wizard, a cruelly powerful dragon-man, and a funny coward. It’s a ragtag team that has a lot of potential.

And then…

It all becomes the same. Repetitive. Monotonous. Everyone sounds identical – which is to say, they are funny and witty and hate each other and the snark is cool, but when it’s nonstop hundreds upon hundreds of pages of the exact same conversations, it’s coma inducing. I hate to be so harsh, but someone’s gotta say it. No one develops, no one grows, and these characters feel very much like caricatures. I just could not bring myself to care, after the four hundred page mark.

Ana: Now, this is what I really liked about Tome of the Undergates: the characters and I will have to disagree with Thea. I don’t think they sound identical, quite the contrary. I thought they were unique and interesting, each having different issues to be dealt with. Even though they all fit into Fantasy stereotypes, they each have something that marked them as different. Lenk, their leader is struggling with a voice inside his head and what exactly does it mean – his inner battle to accept it or not is rather interesting. As interesting is his relationship with the non-human Kataria – there is a budding romance there even though, they are supposed to hate each on principle. Kataria’s race absolutely abhors humans and I loved to see how she too, struggles to accept herself as someone who doesn’t really hate them all as her father hoped. Denaos (who is probably my favourite character) is the “rogue” and obviously someone who has a carefree façade that is far from being true. There is Asper, the Healer (or is she?) hoping to find a place in the world, then there is Dreadaeleon, the magician and Gariath, the dragonman, possibly the last of his race.

Individually these are rather complex characters but their complexity is undoubtedly simplified when they spend any amount of time with each other. The premise is this: they are adventurers – they have freedom and they work for whomever pays them more. They belong to no place and uphold no ideal. They have been together for about one year, even though they hate each other. We are told that they hate each other, every other page. They bicker and they snark and they fight. The humans hate the non-humans, the non-humans want the humans to die a miserable death. Yes, it is monotonous and some of the conversations are exact replicas of previous conversations. As much as I loved the Lenk-Kat interactions for its potential, every single time they are together reads the.same.way.

And yet. Their animosity is not what is shown all the time. In fact, they all present, at one point or another, loyalty to the group and especially to Lenk (in the end of book, I understood why) . I am not sure if this difference between what they seem to think or feel and what they do is on purpose as part of their development. I prefer to think so. Or in the words of Fox Mulder: I want to believe.

Final Thoughts, Verdict & Rating:

Thea: Tome of the Undergates is a victim of its own hype – because while Sam Sykes has a lot of potential, The Name of the Wind this ain’t. The book feels very much like manuscript from an exuberant young author, attempting to write epic fantasy for the first time. There are moments of creativity and flashes of what might one day be brilliance (especially towards the ending of the book) – but they are soon lost to so much noise and nonsense. In my opinion, Tome reads like a decent first draft – but one that needs a lot of cutting down, cleaning up, and development of a sharper focus. And for this, I don’t blame the author at all. Rather, I wonder how did someone not step in at some point and blow the whistle? Is it like Entourage when the guys were making “Meddellin” – being too close to the source material, not seeing the forest for the trees sort of deal?

Bottom line, I wasn’t crazy about Tome of the Undergates. Though it ends on a high note, by that point I simply did not care. I won’t be reading the sequel, but I will give Sam Sykes another try in the future.

Ana: I agree with Thea’s final, overall assessment to a “t”. But even though I didn’t fall in love with the book as much as I hoped and wanted to, I do think there is still great potential in the trilogy. I love the idea that the characters choose to live as adventurers because of the freedom it provides them whilst at the same time they are basically chained by their past and beliefs – this is super compelling to me and I do want to see how it all progresses.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: From the official excerpt:

“Contrary to whatever you might have heard in songs and stories, there are only a few productive things a man can do once he picks up a sword.

“He can put it to use for his country, if he’s got any pride. He can use it to defend his loved ones, if he’s got any. And if he’s got any intelligence at all, he can put it down.

“For those who are lacking all three, the only viable option is to embrace that meanest and most disrespected of professions: adventuring. Falling somewhere just below the rank of mercenary and just above the classification of scum, adventurers are chiefly a source of cheap labor, providing with violence and misfortune what they lack in standards.

“And I count myself among the cheapest.

“Amongst my allies I count a murderer, a zealot, a heretic, a savage and a monster. Amongst my problems I count demons that shouldn’t exist, pirates with a loquaciously murderous bent, a society that wouldn’t care if I was rotting in the earth and my allies. Amongst my dreams…

“I count survival.

“I’ll get to the others after that one’s taken care of.”

Rating:

Thea: 5 Meh, take it or leave it

Ana: 6 Good, recommended with reservations

Reading Next: The Poison Throne by Celine Kiernan