Reading in June

I haven't since July posted one of my supposedly monthly reading recaps, with the books being discussed being from way back in May, and, while they're far from the blog's centerpiece as far as content/insight go, I do miss them a tad. Wandering about the delightfully cluttered "Hat Rack" section of my hard drive I noticed I'd actually written a summary of my reading in June but never posted it, so I decided it was high time for a jump back to the halcyon days of summer, the distant days of June...

Leviathan Wakes, the creation of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, is a Science Fiction novel manages to be a gripping mixture of Space Opera awe and a horror-derived, maybe even noirish, sense of claustrophobia. In the midst of all that, the book's fast paced, fun, and stars two excellently portrayed characters.

I'll admit to some measure of disappointment with The Blonde on the Street Corner. This is the third novel of Goodis's I've read – coming after The Wounded and theSlain and Black Friday – and both of those were downbeat tales of the low and the lonely, each depressive and captivating in its way. The Blonde on the Street Corner has the majority of the formula down. Our protagonists are deadbeats in the depression, bumming off their families with no prospects whatsoever. So the theme's there, and Goodis's prose is dotted with the same flares of poetic sorrow that I've come to expect. But what's missing is anything to grab the reader. This is a book that simply meanders along, but, unlike The Wounded and the Slain, we're never really presented with a reason to care. Though this certainly isn't a bad read, it's nowhere near the level that Goodis is capable of operating on.

The Hour of the Dragon is the only full length novel of Conan the Barbarian that Robert E. Howard ever penned. It's filled with all the hallmarks that are associated with the character – or, perhaps I should stress, those hallmarks that come from the creator's tales and not the lobotomized cinematic or otherwise later versions. This story is filled with adventure, intrigue, and tension, and though Howard manages to drag Conan through almost every aspect of his former life – pirate and thief and so on – it never feels like a rehash or like there's an author up above the pages dragging the characters this way and that without giving them any say. As for the writing, it's Howard's usual, which is to say that it's equal parts painfully exuberant excess and vivid mastery. If you're a fan of the character, this is a necessary read.

The full version of Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz's screenplay Crampton – the earlier, abridged, and derivative version of which I read earlier this year – is a fascinating read for any Ligotti fan. The expected themes – the ephemeral and illusory nature of the world, the hollowness of all existence, and so forth – are present, but the author's hypnotic prose is absent, replaced by tightly written dialogue, bits of banter, and even expletives. Crampton moves at a fast and enjoyable clip, and the finishing anticlimax is powerfully done, but I still do have to say that, overall, the depressive and vivid ecstasy that Ligotti's writing normally brings is, by necessity, absent here. This is an interesting item to be sure, but it's most certainly just for the diehard collector, and not just because of the forbidding price tag.

George R.R. Martin's as adept at short stories as he is at doorstopper epics, and almost every one of the tales in this collection shows his mastery of the form. Reviewed here.

Fevre Dream, Martin's novel of Vampires and steamboats, has lost nothing with time, and it wasn't diminished on reread either. This is a novel rich in characterization and atmosphere, something not to be missed by any fan of Martin's work. Reviewed here.

In many ways, All the Pretty Horses is an inversion of the author's landmark Blood Meridian. John Grady Cole, our protagonist here, is a romantic and a dreamer trespassing on the brutal and unforgiving Wild West that McCarthy's become so justly famous for, and the results are at once heart breaking and even, at times, beautiful. Though I can't say that this novel's as revelatory as Blood Meridian, it's still an excellent read.

The third collection of horror writer Reggie Oliver, Masques of Satan is a volume of subtle ghost stories woven into theater backdrops. My reaction to Oliver is very similar to my reaction to the M.R. James stories I've read, and I mean that both in the positive ways that Oliver's adherents cite and also in the negatives that those Weird Tales-devotees would most certainly not agree to. Like James, Oliver writes in a formal but inviting style, and his words draw you in and make you feel like a part of the conversation. Also like James, his mastery of his subject area is obvious from every word he speaks, but – due to the aforementioned welcoming tone – the knowledge imparted is interesting rather than onerous. Oliver's ghosts, however, are – like James – the least interesting parts of his stories by far, little twists of the supernatural that aren't particularly memorable in and of themselves. I enjoyed this collection a fair bit, but I'd hesitate to recommend it at the forty or fifty dollars you're likely to find it for, and I certainly was not enamored enough with the stories here to spend the several hundred needed to read the author's first and second collections.

I'll admit it: I'm just bewildered here. Boneshaker was a forgettable read packed with problems and a few good ideas that weren't even taken advantage of. How, again, did this ever get near a Hugo? Reviewed here.

Cherie Priest - Boneshaker

In 2010, Boneshaker was nominated for a Hugo. From the outside, this seems to make a great deal of sense. Boneshaker is packed to the gills and beyond with promise. Our story focuses on a meticulously created alternate history Seattle, a world of an extended Civil War and steam technology, of gas-created zombies and the hellishly created and walled in ground zero where they roam. This is a story of mad science and horror, airships and ingenuity, with its characters on a quest to – to quote the back – rewrite history. Unfortunately, not only does every single one of those elements fail to live up to its full potential, but the book is a meandering mess that manages to be significantly less than its parts. Perhaps some of my disappointment comes from the book's prestige, and its failure to live up to it, but I just can't escape the feeling that I read a weak first draft of the brilliant manuscript everyone else got.

The book's opening is a harbinger of what's to come. When discussing how to determine the proper opening of your manuscript, James D. MacDonald says : Another way to say this is: it's the point where the characters can't decide, To heck with this and order out for pizza. The one-way door has blown shut and they can't get back into the theatre. Going by that definition, Boneshaker starts at least a few dozen pages too early. We begin with a history lesson disguised as a prologue disguised as a chapter in a fictional book. There, Priest conveys her fascinating backstory in the most expository way possible. To cut everything short, we learn that resident insane genius Leviticus Blue used his newly-created drill to tunnel under the Seattle streets and rob the city blind. While doing so, he went a bit too low, and a strange gas rose from the ground, killing and then reanimating its victims.

The narrative – though not yet the story by any means – then picks up with a journalist coming to speak with Blue's widow, Briar, and son, Zeke, many years after the disaster. Mind you, however, that you won't know the characters are Blue's family for quite some time. Instead, we discuss the family's other notorious figure, Maynard, who emptied the prison as the gas spread to allow the convicts to escape. Like many of the novel's characters, there's the feeling that Maynard is supposed to be morally ambiguous, but anyone who believes Maynard should have left the convicts to die likely believes that speeding, possession, and insults should all be hanging offenses. Once the reporter leaves, we see Briar and Zeke live their lives, and Briar go to work, all without a hint of their circumstances changing. That being said, on an emotional level, this might be the book's strongest section, in large part because it's one of the very few times that Priest lets her characters breathe, and the relationship between Briar and Zeke is distant and well portrayed.

When the plot does finally get moving, Blue's son, Zeke, makes his way into the walled city to try and clear the names of Blue and Maynard. Not willing to see her son in so much danger, Briar follows him beyond the walls into what's so far been built up as certain death. In actuality, of course, the walled city is not certain death. To be honest, it's not all that threatening at all and is, of course, inhabited by far more than zombies, or, as Priest calls them, rotters. First off there're the criminals there to make lemon sap, a drug created from the blight gas. Then, there are the racially homogenous Chinamen, few of which are named and fewer of which are characterized in any way. Finally, there're the folks who, for reasons all but inexplicable, have chosen to stay.

Once behind the walls, Blue and Zeke begin the process of meandering. In Briar's mind, Zeke is a tough and independent boy. Up until we get in its head, it seems she's right. After all, he did get past the wall, even if doing so is rather easier than one might expect. The moment we see him, however, Zeke bumps into the first of the inner city dwellers, a man named Rudy. Though Rudy is obviously untrustworthy, Zeke decides to follow him to and beyond the point where he knows Rudy is taking him in the wrong direction, to and beyond the point where another character comes right out and shouts Rudy's secret agenda to the world. Put simply, Zeke is a naïve puppy led to the clearly marked slaughterhouse by a single stale treat held by a stranger in blood-drenched clothes.

Like many of Boneshaker's faults – such as the subversion of expectations within the city – Zeke's innocence seems almost intentional. Perhaps Priest was just using Briar as an unreliable narrator, and Zeke's not independent at all outside of his mother's biased eyes. Such an interpretation, however, runs into trouble when the reader reads Briar's chapters behind the wall, for the problem is not just with Zeke. No, Priest's dominant mode of storytelling is simply a character blundering around until they bump into a stronger character (plot device?) that drags them off in a more interesting direction. That formula holds true for just about every on screen plot development in the entire book. This is a book full of motion and devoid of decision, a fast pace with no progress, a marathon runner on a treadmill.

But are the characters at least interesting? Many a novel, after all, has been able to make up for an undirected plot by virtue of those experiencing it, not least of them Steampunk/New Weird juggernaut Perdido Street Station. Alas, the answer is no. Neither Briar nor Zeke grow after the first display of their bond. The two display an almost herculean ability to remain absolutely unchanged by circumstances and revelations alike. The minor characters are on the same level and utterly lacking in depth, each owning no more than one or two attributes. Clearly, Priest was going for the menagerie off the edge school of strange sights and characters, but the problem is that most of her cast isn't fascinating, just shallowly abnormal and, above all, uninteresting.

That's not to say, however, that she can't imbue a character with promise. Swakhammer is introduced as a warrior in a gigantic metal suit, described as a man speaking through a helmet that gave his face the shape of a horse's head crossed with a squid. […] It was as if someone had taken a suit of armor and made it into a jacket. (p. 150) His every aspect, from his strange technology to his italicized dialogue, is clearly designed to set him apart. As soon as he removes his mask, however, he reveals a personality so bland he might as well have been an automaton for all the emotion he evokes. A worse disappointment by far, however, is Minnericht, the mad inventor who's taken over much of the blight. After being touted as a wasteland king by the rest of the cast, and after questions that he might be Blue returned, he instead turns out to be... *drum roll* yet another megalomaniacal villain, a baddie that must be dealt with by bullets after what little mystery he has is wrung out by the most improbable of coincidences and the most deflating of reveals.

Don't go away thinking that that's the only disappointing answer to an intriguing question, however. Almost every one of the novel's grand mysteries is similarly executed by a perfunctory and expository answer, with Priest managing to strike a balance between explaining away every hint of wonder and still somehow having everything make absolutely no sense. Why did the citizens build a wall instead of simply building a cover for where the gas was leaking out? Why is nobody else in the country even remotely interested by the presence of the damned undead? Why did the rotters listen to Minnericht? If there were only two ways into the city, and one was destroyed, why does nobody seem to care? For that matter, why was the only man on the path into the city an aged and unimportant defector? Why haven't the rotters starved in their nearly two decades of quasi-isolation? And on, and on, and on the inconsistencies go.

In her afterword, Priest defends the changes she's made to history and then writes: I realize that the story is a bit of a twisted stretch, but honestly—isn't that what steampunk is for? (p. 416) Well, no, I don't think that's what it's for at all. Speculative Fiction, in my mind, does not exist merely to make changes, but to make a point with those changes, whether that point be a thematic one or just an innovative way to convey a fantastic tale. Boneshaker does none of that, lacking not only a coherent theme but also a coherent plot. This is, as far as I can see, a sightseeing tour missing any particularly original or notably thrilling things to see. No, Boneshaker is not abhorrent, but its every element is either disappointing or uninteresting, and I see no reason why it ever came within spitting distance of the Hugo.

Dreadnought and Surface Detail [Cover Art]

Absolutely excellent cover, which serves to remind me that I really need to get to Boneshaker. Or, really, any steampunk at all.

And, on a wholly different note, we've got Iain M. Banks's new Culture novel:


I'm still not sure if I really like, or really dislike, that cover, but it's eye catching and interesting either way, so I guess it succeeded. I've heard so many good things about Banks, but still haven't really gotten into him. I read Use of Weapons last year, and while I found parts of it to be exceptional, other parts soured the experience quite a bit. And then, of course, I got the ending twist of Player of Games revealed to me by someone who assumed I'd read it. Still, I suppose I can't count that against the man, and I guess I'll give him another chance at some point.