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The Book Stack #9

Dan P.Sunday, June 11, 20170

Forbidden Thoughts, editor Jason Rennie (2017).

This book got a lot of play in the last year or so as “Milo” rose to (in)fame with his various political antics. And antics they are, watching him speak or reading his rants, it’s pretty clear that regardless of whether he believes what says or not, he’s not actually interested in anything but self aggrandizement. Mostly his positions are pretty poorly formed and rely on the misdirection of using non-PC language and/or personal attacks, taking everyone’s attention off of the lack of substance to anything he’s saying. Yet somehow, the editor and publisher of this collection of short stories, decided that his name on the cover would be an attraction. It worked. But then, for those seeking to read more of his work, the disappointment of finding that all he did was write a foreword note at the beginning of the book that has little if anything to do with the content. He asserts that there’s never been a collection of such revolutionary non-PC science fiction in all of history. Obviously he’s clueless to the Libertarian origins of much of modern Sci-Fi, or even the genre as a whole. But let’s set all that aside and get on to the meat of the book itself.

There are some great stories in here that save the book from being worthy of nothing more than the scrap heap. The problem is, there are also a bunch, probably more than half, of the stories, that do little more than attempt to incense the reader by being as non-PC as they possibly can, throwing in words and thoughts and actions that are guaranteed to horrify anyone with leanings to the left. But they go way too far, and I don’t mean that because I’m incensed by them, but because they’re little more than the same as I accuse Milo of above. They’re distractions, they’re glaring baubles, designed to do nothing more than distract the reader from the fact that the stories have no substance. They’re just ranting and exaggeration designed for effect and show the authors’ complete lack of story telling ability.

In the end, there’s just not enough to recommend the book. There’s far better, shall we say, non-leftist, non-PC science fiction out there than anything in this book. ☆☆

Infomocracy by Malka Older (2016).

It’s an interesting read, relatively fast paced, and I enjoyed it. On the other hand, it was a little like going to an all you can eat buffet, where you take some of everything, get back to your table, and it’s both too much food to eat, and not all of it quite goes together on the same plate.

Taking the level of suspension of disbelief into the political and information realm, it requires that you believe that countries that currently exist still kinda sorta do, but not exactly, and are instead now connected not by cultural or racial heritage, but by a mosaic of political viewpoints, scattered across the globe. Often they’re completely disparate to their neighbors, and even within individual countries, broken up into a mess of political parties, some run by corporations, some by de facto governments, some by grassroots organizations.

And somehow, within all of this, we’re expected to buy into that all of these same factionalized and fractionalized groups of people and political organizations have agreed to have everything coordinated by one single entity that provides them with filtered information so they can make a decision where they want to live and work at any given moment. Throw in a gratuitous romance with two high powered individuals, who somehow decide, in the midst of all this Information overload, to not bother to check each other out but just go on gut feeling, and then proceed to violate the principles of their careers just because each other was good in bed.

It doesn’t make it a less fun read, but it does make it a little hard to swallow. ☆☆☆☆

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (2014).

This one was a slow slog to get started on, and several times during probably the first half of it I was tempted to just give up and set it aside. Much of that, I think, is that it felt like a slightly stilted translation – as if the translator was searching for a way to express concepts that he didn’t quite know how to put into English fluidly. I’m glad I stuck through it, as in the end, I liked the way it developed and will probably go on to read the rest of the trilogy. I wasn’t wowed, but I was intrigued.

It’s interesting, given the political climate in which we’re living these days, in various parts of the world, how the premise of first contact is handled. The idea that humans basically divide into two camps (three in the book, but still more or less fall into two ideals) – those who see contact as a threat (in this case an explicit one) and do all in their power to resist, and those who see it as an inevitability with which they collaborate. Kind of reminds me of the current sci-fi television show Colony.

I also liked the undercurrent of the conflict between science and religion, though I think it’s perhaps drawn as too starkly a black and white issue, one or the other. That probably fits more the Chinese cultural model of what science and religion are all about (though I’m no expert on Chinese culture), at least from what I’ve gleaned over the years. ☆☆☆

The Gourmet Detective mystery series (8 volumes), by Peter King (1996-2003).

Okay, hmm… I’ve read the whole series now. I’m not going to do individual book reviews, some of them are better than others, but they’re all enjoyable, quick reads. Then again, throw gourmet food and wine into anything and I’m likely to add some points to it in my mind. Bizarrely, though, given that I gave all the books three stars, I don’t know that I recommend them. Had they been written fifty years ago, I’d give them some more slack, but here are my issues with, well, all of them:

The gourmet detective himself, our protagonist, is an unlikable twit. He’s a middle aged, pretentious white man, with delusions of self importance. He fancies himself a ladies man and, of course, manages to get one or another into bed (trailed off, never portrayed, just make sure we know it happened, wink, wink) in all or almost all the books. He’s misogynistic, racist, and classist. He fancies himself a connoisseur of all things food and wine, and throws about names and terms, most of which the average reader will not have heard of, and will probably just move past without much thought. The problem is, he’s pretty much clueless and the mistakes in his descriptions of various ingredients, dishes, and bottles of fermented grape juice are legion.

In short, and yes, I realize I’m generalizing and could be accused of bias myself, he’s the sort of detective that a 70+ year old retired upper middle class British metallurgical engineer (who apparently at some point went to the Cordon Bleu cooking school to be trained as a chef, though my bet is he just took a few cooking classes for home cooks, then again, who knows, but it seems he did it after retiring at some point in his 70s) would reimagine himself to be if he were to become a food detective. In short, a sort of Walter Mitty alter ego. ☆☆☆

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance (2016).

You know the running joke where people start comparing how hard they had it growing up… it starts with something like “we had to walk 5 miles to school every day…” and ends up with things like “uphill both ways” “cardboard boxes for shoes”, etc., etc.? This book is that done in long form. It’s an ostensible memoir from someone who grew up in a disadvantaged, poor community (except he really didn’t, he grew up skirting around it, because he actually spent most of his childhood living with or near relatives or step-relatives who were fairly well off and encouraged him to stay away from that community) who spends nearly 300 pages trying to convince us that his particular disadvantaged, poor community has it worse than any other one. And he also ricochets between being pretentious about his own life and condescending about his roots and the people who still live there, and trying to hold them up as somehow better by virtue of being in worse straits than how he imagines (with no evidence that he has any experience of) other disadvantaged, poor communities to be. Basically it’s a barely veiled tome touting “Hillbilly (i.e., poor white) Lives Matter More” and as such is just as egregious as much of the BLM movement comes across at times. ☆☆

Daimyo by S. Lee Lyndon (2014-2015).

Really enjoyed this entire trilogy. It was an interesting glimpse into a culture and period that I’m not overly familiar with, other than just peripherally from being into the martial arts world. It would be a complete spoiler to tell you what the overall arc of the story is, so let’s just say it covers the adventures of a young Japanese fisherman as he matures in life. In the end, while a totally logical step by step, the overall arc of the three books is a bit far-fetched, but fun to follow along. It’s a sort of novel form of the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, or adaptation, sometimes called Lamarckism, i.e., that somehow or other non-biological accomplishments and internalized histories can be passed down genetically to the next generations (pretty much a dismissed idea in the genetic world). Still, a very enjoyable read. ☆☆☆☆

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild (2016).

This one was as difficult to read as it probably was to write. An outsider attempts as close as possible, an insider view of a particular culture, in this case, far right wing, for the most part fundamentalist Christian, Tea Party voters, from an industrial area in Louisiana. She ingratiates herself into their world and admirably does her best to tell their stories, particularly what has led to their political alignment and voting (what’s often talked about in left wing media as “why do these people vote against their best interests?”). She succeeds in making it interesting, and even in giving a decent view into the logic and thought that these folk use. At the same time, if it was at any point her intention to make them look actually logical or sensible, she fails, because bluntly, they come across looking more moronic than the so-called “liberal media” has ever portrayed them. Maybe that was her real, behind the scenes intention from the start. ☆☆☆

Sixteen books seems enough to give you some reading material for now…. Enjoy!

Books (Reviews)

Books, History, Politics, Science Fiction

The Book Stack #8

Dan P.Sunday, April 23, 20170

Let’s jump right in from where we left off….

The Liveship Traders Trilogy by Robin Hobb

Ship of Magic (1998), The Mad Ship (1999), and Ship of Destiny (2000).

There’s a certain sort of morality play that runs through this trio of books, as the various members of the spotlighted Vestrit family explore and interact with the world, some by choice, some by force, and come to grips with what may be one of the most important moral questions – Myself, or Others? While not preachy about the choices that each of the main characters make, it becomes clear that the author has a preference in the answer to which one leads to a life better lived.

Set in a world with semi-sentient, and often highly emotional, ships made from a mysterious substance referred to as wizardwood, the Vestrits are a seafaring family who “own” their own liveship. It’s a world of conquest, with precious substances to be found, to be traded, to be plundered. There are pirates. There’s a despotic monarch and his retinue. There are strange, “other” sorts of humans who generally keep to themselves, but are integral to the rest of the world’s functioning. There are even sea monsters, of a sort.

Well written, enjoyable, engaging, and… long. ☆☆☆☆

Inspector Erlendur Novels (8 Book Series) by Arnaldur Indridason

I don’t usually review a series until I finish it, but the truth is, I don’t know that I will. I appreciate that this series of police detective novels has won awards all over the place, but I’m not sure that I know why. Maybe it’s just the translation from Icelandic to English, but I found them to be stilted and strangely paced. I read the first two Jar City (2000, also called Tainted Blood in some translations) and Silence of the Grave (2001), and then I just sort of put the rest of the series on hold.

None of the protagonist, Inspector Erlendur, nor his two detective companions, are particularly likable, in fact, at moments, they’re kind of detestable. In their own ways, they’re all bigots, either ageist, sexist, racist, or some sort of ist. They have a bleak view of humanity that they make little effort to hide. They all have their various secret problems, ofttimes as troubling as those of the criminals they’re tracking down. Some might claim it makes them more human, or ordinary, but do we really want to read about those sorts of detectives?

But more to the point as a reader, mostly, they just plod along, and we have to plod with them, until they happen across a clue in that leads to another, and another, and eventually to solving the crime. It’s perhaps a little too “real time” of a pace for going through a mystery novel, giving full meaning to the term “police procedural”, because we’re right there for every little procedure, relevant or not. ☆☆☆

IQ by Joe Ide

Fast paced, gritty, and gripping. Everything the two books in the review above weren’t. A wise-cracking, street-wise detective from southern California takes on the world of rappers, gangsters, cops, robbers, murders, hit and runs, and more, all from a little home office. Now, one could argue that a private eye who has no real credentials to speak of that gets into all of that is far less believable than a plodding police detective, and I couldn’t argue with you there. But I will assert it’s a far more interesting and riveting read.

Isaiah Quintabe is driven by ghosts of his parents and older brother, mostly the latter, who was killed in a hit and run when he was young. IQ, as he’s styled, basically raises himself from that point on, treating his brother’s apartment as his own, and somehow managing to cobble together enough money to live on, pay the rent and bills, and maintain the fiction that he’s still under adult supervision. Somewhere along the way he discovers a talent for noticing when things just aren’t right, and putting together the logic of what’s gone wrong – and builds it into a sort of casual detective service.

In this volume, he takes on solving a murder yet to happen – as he’s engaged by a reclusive rapper who’s convinced that someone is out to kill him. Some of those around him think it’s for real, others think it’s a delusional fantasy, and IQ has to sort his way through the lot. Somehow or other, it all works, and it’s well worth a read, and well deserving of the accolades the book has gotten. ☆☆☆☆

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

There’s a difference between curling up with a good book to just read and enjoy, and sitting down to read a piece of literature. This is the latter. A translation of a South Korean novel that’s taken the literary world there by storm, and had praise heaped upon it internationally, this isn’t the sort of book to meander through with a mug of hot cocoa at your side. I think it best if you slam back a couple of shots of whiskey first, and maybe take the time for another couple between sections.

No question it’s a creepy, and creeping story that will pull you in quickly. It’s basically a first person novella – but from three different first persons, though not all at once. Instead, it’s the same story, that of a woman who decides to become vegetarian after awakening from a terrifying, blood-soaked nightmare, first from her husband’s perspective, then the story picks up from the point of view of her brother-in-law, and finally culminates from the perspective of her oldest sister. The object of the story, Yeong-Hye, is mostly just presented from the outside, though here and there we get a glimpse of her thoughts thrown in as italicized tangents.

Is the book worth a read? Yes. Is it one you’ll come out the other side of having enjoyed? Unlikely. ☆☆☆

Chop Suey by Barry Kalb

I guess I was on a bit of a kick of reading foreign mystery novels. There must have been an article or list somewhere that I read that intrigued me, and I launched into it without making a note of where I saw it. This one comes to us from Hong Kong, where the author was a longtime lecturer (some 35 years) at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre. It’s often interesting when a journalist, or at least someone steeped in that writing tradition, turns their hand towards fiction. I can think of numerous books that came across as reportage rather than novels, and lack the appeal of the latter.

That’s not the case here, with a well written story that takes us from the discovery of a body washed up on the shores of Hong Kong through the intricate world of Chinese art and antiquities, and those who pursue it with a passion, and bring in the politics and maneuverings of both the local and mainland Chinese bureaucracy, neither of whom really want the answers sought by our erstwhile detective. In this case, the latter isn’t one by trade, but simply by circumstance, in reality, he’s a reporter who finds himself embroiled in the situation because the aforementioned corpse was one of his best friends.

What? In this day and age, a reporter, a journalist, who actually investigates? It’s nice to know they still exist, even if only in fiction. Well worth a read! ☆☆☆☆

Five books, or at least five reviews, seems to be a good stopping point in a single post. More to come.

Books (Reviews)

The Book Stack #7

Dan P.Monday, February 6, 20170

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?! Let’s take a peak at a little of what’s come and gone on the reading pile.

The Sam Reilly Collection, Christopher Cartwright

A trio of books that follow a sort of vague, Indiana Jones-ish theme, if Indiana were a spoiled rich kid with a covert ops military background, a daddy with more money than the IMF, and an inexplicable talent for stumbling across the trails of mythical artifacts that are less the provenance of history than they are conspiracy theories on the deep web. Sam Reilly is ostensibly a marine biologist, though the topic of marine biology plays, at best, a sort of triggering event and then retreats into the background. Instead, it provides a tacit reason for placing his Batcave on the deck of an oceanographic research vessel. As I found in the book by Cartwright that I reviewed in my last round, Reilly and one or two other characters are such the focus of the writing that no one else really ever steps out of the shadows for more than a cameo appearance, and are immediately forgettable. The books are a quick, and fun read, sort of rollicking adventures following Reilly as he tracks down a long missing Nazi blimp in The Last Airship and discovers its true, deep, dark secrets, a mysterious ancient shipwreck that has become tied to a marine life destroying mining operation in The Mahogany Ship, and finally, the search for Atlantis in, well, Atlantis Stolen. Much of each volume is taken up with battles between the forces Reilly is able to muster using daddy’s money and those of daddy’s business rivals, making this feel at times like a bitch slap fest between Bill Gates’ and Carlos Slim’s children at a debutante ball. With guns. ☆☆☆

Haven Series, Carmen Webster Buxton

I’m not sure if two books constitutes a series, but so be it. Perhaps there are more to come. Two really well written books, The Sixth Discipline and No Safe Haven, that start from the premise that humans have “seeded” another world, and that the original settlers divided into factions, who’ve take different approaches to life. It comes down to a culture clash between those who’ve chosen a life close to and in tune with nature, including a separate faction of extremists, and those who’ve gone the citified and technological route. Both books are focused around the misadventures of Ran-Del Jahanpur, one of the nature folk, who is captured for purposes I won’t reveal here by one of the corporate titans of the techno folk, as he finds himself forced to adapt to the latter. Much of the storyline is spent on the struggle between the two cultures, and it’s an artfully drawn one, that ends up ensnaring people on both sides into its web. I enjoyed both books thoroughly, and hopefully the series continues! ☆☆☆☆

Forty Days at Kamas, Preston Fleming, May 11, 2015

What is our fascination with dystopian futures? I should probably just stop there and leave us all pondering. Now, when I read this, on someone’s recommendation, I didn’t know that it was intended to be the first of a trilogy. I’m going to say upfront that I have no intention, no interest, in reading the books that follow. It’s not that it wasn’t well written, it was. It’s not that it doesn’t have interesting characters, it does. It’s not that it doesn’t have a reasonably engaging storyline, it does. But you know what? It’s a downer. I suppose that’s part of the point of dystopian novels. The problem with this one is that, despite its moments of hope and triumph in a world where America has gone the route of totalitarian rule with labor camps and no room for political dissent (this was written well before our last election and its consequences, and I don’t think there was anything prescient about it), there’s nothing upbeat, even in those moments. There also doesn’t seem to be much in the way of the rest of the world – a few moments where things outside of the country are referred to, but really, it’s almost as if the globe outside of the USA has ceased to exist. It’s just a depressing, bleak future with no rays of sunshine. It reminds me in many ways of the TV series Colony, without the humanity, light, or humorous bits. ☆☆☆

China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F. McHugh, March 1992

I remember McHugh’s short stories from my avid reading of science fiction throughout the time she was writing. This was her first novel, of four, she was better known for her short stories. Mostly she wrote starting at the end of the 80s, on through the mid-90s, and then one novel and a few stories at the beginning of the 00s. As far as I know, she hasn’t written anything since 2003. And that’s a shame, because she’s a great writer. And, in fact, this was one of my favorite reads of 2016. In a sense, it’s the complete opposite of the previous book in this post, positing a future that, while not utopian, at the very least approaches our future with positivity. It’s a world where not only is there international interaction and cooperation, but that technology and humanity have moved forward, to bring out the best in people rather than the worst, both on Earth and Mars, where we’ve established a colony. The book follows the personal and work life of a young man on a voyage of self-discovery in a postrevolution world where the revolution made things better, not worse, for humanity. ☆☆☆☆☆

And that seems a good place to stop for the moment. There are more to come, and hopefully I’ll manage to keep this coming more regularly.

Books (Reviews)

Fantasy, Science Fiction, Thrillers

Newsflash! Cookbook Update

Dan P.Friday, December 9, 20160

Mixed good and bad news on our new cookbook, Eat Salt.

First the bad – it turns out that Amazon’s print-on-demand service, CreateSpace, doesn’t offer the kind of paper the book was specified to be printed on, 80# glossy stock, the best they can do is a 60# smooth, but not glossy stock, and what they’ve actually been printing the book on was 55# paperback paper. So a few people who ordered from Amazon that I knew, let me know that the book wasn’t up to snuff. Lots of back and forth with CreateSpace, Amazon Help, and the publisher, and the end result is that despite them being very nice and responsive about it all, I’ve pulled distribution from Amazon.

While I’d love to have the book get more global exposure through Amazon’s distribution channels, this isn’t my primary source of income and I’m more concerned with the quality of the product. It’s unfortunate, but at least for the moment, Amazon isn’t an option unless/until they offer the type of paper that the book should be printed on. It’ll probably stay on their listings for a short time, and may even stay permanently, just listed as “out of stock”. But the upshot is, I can’t recommend ordering this particular book from them right now. My other books, absolutely, they’re not photo books on glossy paper, so standard book paper is just fine.

As a note, if you did order from them and got one of the lower quality ones on plain paper, go ahead and give a shot at returning the book to Amazon citing the quality difference from expectations – there’s no guarantee that they’ll go for it, but why not try? I’ve asked the CreateSpace folk to honor those requests, but they didn’t give me a definitive answer, only asking me if I knew how many copies we were talking about – you’d think they’d have that info at their fingertips, no?

Now, the good news – cutting out the need for a middleman to make a profit, the price on the book direct from the publisher is lower than Amazon was selling it for. So you can now get the book for $46 instead of $50, direct (click on the button below the photo above). Plus, there are a lot of end of year discounts popping up direct from the publisher, I’m posting them daily on my author page on Facebook – take advantage! The discounts apply to the other books too, which can also be ordered from my page on the publisher’s site.

Books (Mine)

Eat Salt

Dan P.Saturday, November 5, 20160

It’s here…!

Eat Salt: archaic rural expression meaning to be someone’s guest, to share their table

“The first cookbook from Dan Perlman, chef and co-owner of the famed Casa SaltShaker, Buenos Aires’ longest running “closed door restaurant”, offering Andean-Mediterranean fare in an intimate, shared table setting. Featuring 150 recipes from the chef’s archives, along with full color photos, this is not just a great read, but a work of art. Destined for regular use in the kitchen, and beautiful to show off to friends. The book is an experience only rivaled by dinner at Casa SaltShaker itself.”

Available by direct order right now – it always takes retail services a couple of weeks to pick things up – but why wait? Order yours now!

Books (Mine)

The Book Stack #6

Dan P.Monday, October 31, 20160

Continuing with some more fantasy, and a bit of other….

My Tender Matador / Tengo Miedo Torero, Pedro Lemebel, September 2002, Translator: Katherine Silver

Let’s start outside the realm of fantasy. I actually don’t remember how this one came to my attention – it’s the story, basically, of the end of the days of Augustin Pinochet’s rule over Chile, focused on the events leading up to an attempted assassination. The book goes back and forth between Pinochet’s viewpoint, and that of an aging drag queen, the latter of whom has befriended a young, handsome man who turns out to be involved in the assassination attempt. It’s extremely well written, and the characters are well defined. It was a little slow reading for me as I initially started reading this in the original Spanish version, but the constant use of colloquial terms and street slang made it near impossible, and what I ended up doing was reading the two versions more or less side by side (learned a lot of Chilean street slang!). ☆☆☆

Code of Conduct, Brad Thor, July 2015

Over time I’ve read through the entire previous series (15 previous books) of the “Scot Horvath” novels. These are sort of Jack Bauer/24 on steroids if you can imagine that. They’re thrillers. They’re fast paced, they require some level of suspension of disbelief – they’re not totally out of left field, they’re basically, “what if?” scenarios that any of us could imagine given the state of the world right now, even if highly unlikely. And Thor makes them completely believable as potential scenarios. For me, given that I like thrillers of this sort, they’re entertaining as well as thought provoking. Fast reads. And, this one fits right in with all of that. There’s now a 17th novel out, Foreign Agent, and it’s on my reading stack! ☆☆☆☆

The Ronin Trilogy, Travis Heermann

Another trilogy, this one consisting of Heart of the Ronin (2010), Sword of the Ronin (2013), Spirit of the Ronin (2015). I stumbled across this one when I was looking for some martial arts books for study, and it looked interesting. Since the first volume was available for free on my Kindle Unlimited account, I gave it a spin, and rapidly went on to the sequels. Although set in feudal Japan, and following the story of a ronin, a masterless samurai, the writing style is very “western” in its approach, which gave them an interesting flavor – sort of like watching a completely foreign culture and concept develop from an outside observer’s eye. The author has a nice little quip on his site, “Writing fiction set in a far different time and place is challenging. The key is cram as much background information into your brain, let it percolate for a while, and see what bubbles out.”. And, no question, that’s what he’s done – creating a real image of a very different world than I’m familiar with, and at the same time, letting it develop in a way that I could actually visualize it, without feeling lost. I loved it. ☆☆☆☆

The Inheritance Trilogy, N.K. Jemisin

And, yet another trilogy! The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), The Broken Kingdoms (2010), The Kingdom of Gods (2011). This one took me a little bit to get into. I can’t even tell you exactly what it was about it – it’s certainly well written, and an interesting concept. I think that it was that the protagonist in the first volume just didn’t resonate with me, and I initially found her viewpoint to be sort of a bore, or maybe it was just that the development of the story started out too slowly for me. But, the book picked up, and I ended up enjoying it enough to go on to the other two volumes, which take place from the viewpoints of other characters, and I liked both of those volumes much more. I mean, what’s not to like about a world where humans, gods, godlings, and demons, all live together and interact on a daily basis? In the end, highly recommendable. And, a nice perk that you can buy the entire trilogy in one volume. ☆☆☆☆

The Price of Retribution, Christopher Cartwright, March 2015

For such a small book (okay, 370 pages), it’s a pretty sweeping epic story, that starts with a jewel heist in long ago London and then jumps across the oceans to Australia, and back again. Another sort of “gentleman thief” – I guess those sort just attract me – it’s a great story, with romance, revenge, and a bit of rampaging. I found the writing to be quite good – at times it wandered a little, and I felt like for a moment that I, or the author, was losing the plot, but then it came back on track. The characters are interesting, though I felt that while the central ones are really well developed, that those who were not directly a part of the main storyline were a little greyed out by comparison, as if they didn’t really matter that much. ☆☆☆

The Book of Strange New things, Michel Faber, June 2015

The writing itself was fine, the author is excellent at drawing out characterization and visuals that many would find difficult to imagine. And the overall arc of the story is interesting and was enough to keep me going through to the end. However, the protagonist, and his wife, who we basically don’t meet other than briefly at the beginning and then through a series of letters, are some of the most unpleasant, unsympathetic “good guys” that one could care to encounter. Misogynistic, racist, religiously intolerant, judgmental, and constantly spouting stereotypes about everyone and everything around them – it was just plain unpleasant to read. (Honestly, given the time period I was reading this in, it was like trying to listen to Donald Trump talk about anyone who isn’t American, White, Male, and Christian.) And it was made worse because it was cloaked in a sort of pious righteousness. ☆☆

Books (Reviews)

Books, Fantasy, GLBT, Politics, Science Fiction, Thrillers

The Book Stack #5

Dan P.Friday, September 16, 20160

Okay, I’ve gotten way behind on this. I’m going to start with the last few rounds of fantasy series. I’m still working my way through this buzzfeed list.

Peter V. Brett, The Demon Cycle

Currently a four volume series including The Painted Man (2008), The Desert Spear (2010), The Daylight War (2013), and The Skull Throne (2015), with a fifth and final volume due out some time in 2017. I’ve read the first three, with the fourth on deck, and I’ll review that down the line.

This one took me a little bit to get into to. When I first started it, the concept of some sort of demons rising from the ground at night with the intent to destroy humanity, and being able to ward them off with simple signs drawn or painted, seemed, well, stupid. But at some point I got into the whole magic and sweep of it, as I pushed further through (I’m trying to be relatively faithful to the list I have of recommended fantasy series). I still find myself a little mystified by the existence of the demons – apparently their existence being “our” fault, after some sort of nuclear holocaust, there’s just no real connection as to why they came to be, or why there are so many different types. But I like the battle of good and evil, and that it’s not all one-sided, the battle also rages between factions of remaining humans. The not so loosely veiled Christianity vs Islam approach to both demon fighting and each other is clearly drawn from the political and religious battles of our own modern world, and at first I thought I was going to find that a bit off-putting, because it seemed a bit “Christian good, Muslim bad”, and overall, there is that bent, but at least the author takes the time to explore the motivations and drive of the other side, and why its approach is so different. Still, the series mostly stays with three primary characters, starting from their adolescence and working forward, and although sections are shown from the viewpoint of others, particularly on the “Islam side”, these three are all on the “Christian side”. ☆☆☆☆

Patricia A. McKillip, The Riddle Master

Trilogy includes The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), and Harpist in the Wind (1979).

I have to admit, this wasn’t one of my favorites as I’ve been reading through these various series. It’s well written and engaging, no question. And there’s the whole magic, and a grand quest, and romance, and even a bit of battling. But when it came down to it, I didn’t like any of the principal characters. Their reasons for jumping into their individual quests and the grand one were superficial, and mostly seemed spur of the moment, impulsive, emotional decisions, with little thought. To a tee, each of the protagonists was basically selfish, barely giving a moment’s thought to their families and friends, because “I wanna do this”, and not seeming to care if others were hurt in the process. They hold stupid grudges, they’re not interested in each other’s points of view, and there just seems to be a missing logic to a lot of what they do. At the end of the trilogy, with the big wind-up, I just really didn’t care who came out “on top”, and I was just ready move on to another series and hopefully some more likable people. ☆☆

Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn

Trilogy of The Final Empire (2006), The Well of Ascension (2007), and The Hero of Ages (2008).

I loved this one, from minute one, to the end. I’d already encountered Sanderson’s fantasy writing in the first two volumes of the (eventually) ten volume The Stormlight Archive, and really liked his writing there (it was before I started doing these reviews, so I haven’t written it up, maybe when another volume or two is published). The whole concept of using something ordinary, in this case, metals, as essentially magical essences, fascinated me, especially the interplay between the different types of magic, or power, engendered by each. The sweep of the different factions, the exploration, the delving into the history of how it all came to pass, some of which might, in other hands, seem like pedantic tangents, was treated in a way that was just as intriguing as the action sequences. I like that both protagonists and antagonists have their flaws and aren’t “black and white” as to where they fall, and, I really appreciated that the character development as the storyline continued, allowed for some real twists and turns. The world setting (at least up until the way the series wraps up) would make a fascinating MMORPG… just sayin’. ☆☆☆☆☆

Brandon Sanderson, The Alloy of Law (2011)

Okay, after that glowing praise, I’m going to have to damn this one with the faint stuff. After a several year stint off on other fantasy writing, Sanderson returned to the Mistborn world with another trilogy, referred to cutely as the “Wax and Wayne” trilogy. It’s set in the same world, but 300 years in the future. And I have to admit, I didn’t really like it. The combination of the whole Wild West scenario with the deep magic, stone castle feel of the original trilogy, just didn’t jive for me (there’s no seeming logical reason for the shift in such a short span of time). I realize that it’s supposed to be the start of a completely different series, and that Sanderson originally wrote it just as a creative writing exercise in a new genre “to clear his head”, and then later decided to publish it, but given the ties to the original, it’s hard to separate the two, one being a rich, explorative series, and the other being a sort of perfunctory shoot-em-up series that just makes use of pieces of the original. It also felt a bit as if it had just been scribbled off, and while when I read it I didn’t know about the reason it had been written, in retrospect it makes sense, it didn’t feel like it was written with any commitment to tell a story, it was more just a lot of character sketch development. I ended this one with no real interest in reading the other two in the W&W series. ☆☆

Scott Lynch, Gentleman Bastards

Trilogy of The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves, with four more planned novels in the series yet to come.

I find, often, that I really enjoy books that take on the world from “the other side”. In this series, the protagonists are a band of thieves, con men, and even at times, worse. And yet, for the most part, they’re the most sympathetic characters in the series – of course it was written that way, but it all feels very logical. Of course we should root for these guys to come out on top. And no, it shouldn’t be easy for them, they should have to take their hard knocks, but they should get back up and keep going, and bit by bit, time and again, come out on top. It’s the same reason I love movies like Cary Grant’s John Robie in To Catch a Thief or it’s later incarnations as Robert Wagner’s Alexander Mundy in It Takes a Thief or even the modern version of Matt Bomer’s Neal Caffrey in White Collar (though admittedly that might be partly just the eye-candy). This series follows, particularly, one Locke Lamora, from his introduction to the band of the Gentleman Bastards as he develops from an impulsive, willful, and a bit dangerous young child, to a more considered, but still impulsive, willful, and a bit dangerous young adult. The writing is tight, the character development is brilliant, and the storyline makes complete sense, even when it seems to jump around. It doesn’t hurt, from my personal perspective, that there’s lots of good food and drink, with intricate descriptions, thrown in – someone likes their food. I’m looking forward to the continuation of the series. ☆☆☆☆

Books (Reviews)

Books, Crime, Fantasy

R.I.P. Andrew, For Realz, This Time

Dan P.Wednesday, July 20, 20160

So, I’m getting kind of a re-do here. I find myself writing a little tribute to my friend Andrew Martin, a eulogy of sorts. But I’m writing it for the second time. A decade after the first time. Andrew would appreciate this, with a certain level of dark humor that we shared.

It was the late 80s, early 90s. Andrew and I shared some of the same haunts – mostly cabaret spots, often ending up more or less closing out the bar together at Don’t Tell Mama in the West Village or Marie’s Crisis in the theater district. We were young. Younger anyway. I suppose I was in my early to mid 30s, he in his early to mid 20s. I was the food and wine writer for QSF Magazine. One day Andrew came to me with a proposal – he was launching a new publication centered around the cabaret scene, CaB magazine. He wanted to include some restaurant reviews each issue, along with other content that wasn’t necessarily cabaret related, but might be of interest to those reading it. He asked me if I’d write for him, and I did, issue after issue from June of ’92 until June of ’94.

Along the way, we became friends. We even dated a couple of times, but found that our attempts at romance tended to devolve into fits of hysterical laughter rather than steamy encounters. We left that part of our friendship to the wayside. And then one day, he announced that he needed a break, was going to stop publishing CaB, and get away for a little while. He had his demons, we all did. And he disappeared from my life.

And then he died. We had plenty of mutual friends at the time, and at least half a dozen of them told me that he’d passed away. It was always a little suspicious. An illness, an accident, no one seemed to know what had actually happened. But apparently he’d spent time somewhere, far from New York City, and was no longer with us, having gone to that big cabaret in the sky. I wrote a small note in memory of him on my website on the page with the index of the various articles I’d written for CaB. Now and again, mostly when I was revising something on the site, I’d think of him and wonder what the real story was.

A decade later, in late 2005, October 22nd to be exact, I woke up to find an email in my inbox from an Andrew Martin. My momentary thought was simply that it was a coincidence, it’s not exactly an uncommon sort of name. I clicked on it, and lo and behold, it was him. Not dead. He’d come across my little paean to his demise on my website and wanted to assure me that he was alive and well, living in New York, and participating with a comedy troupe, appropriately given the moment, named Meet the Mistake. I was thrilled. I had also just moved to Buenos Aires a few months before, and was not there to run over and give him a welcome back from the beyond hug.

But I did that just a few months later on a return visit. I went to one of his performances. I waited at the door, gave him a big hug, and a flower, which he assured me he’d place on his own gravesite. We went out for drinks, we caught up. And, though not by any stretch regularly, we kept in touch, an email exchange back and forth every couple of months. Then, a few years later, Facebook hit the scene. He was one of my first connections, and we took to commenting on each other’s trivial posts, and both being night owls, having the occasional late night chat when we found ourselves online at the same time. Not every day, not every week, maybe every 2-3 months. We flirted a bit – harmless flirtation, I’m happily married to Henry, and he was dating someone.

His mother passed away last year and we had a few more regular talks at night. Somewhere in there he went back to school, planning on a new career outside of the theater world. I had my upcoming 40th high school reunion (which was last weekend, I didn’t make it), he had his upcoming 30th, this coming weekend.

It wasn’t uncommon for a bit of time to pass without us talking. We were both busy. We lived in very different worlds, both geographically and the direction our passions had taken us. He often started chats with reminding me that he was still alive and kicking, usually involving some peculiar and humorous gag related to voices or visits from another realm.

And somehow, I missed it. He passed away the first week in June, a heart attack followed by a fall and head injury, found a day or two later. There were plenty of posts on his Facebook page about it, from his twin sister, and from friends, though none mutual, which might be why it didn’t burble to the top of my Facebook feed. Much has been written about him there, and tributes to him far more eloquent than my contribution may be in other spots. Sweet and charming when he wanted to be, a razor-tongued hellion when that was the direction called for, and funny, pretty much all the time.

Today would have been his birthday. 47, 48, I’m not sure which. It’s how I found out, when I went to his page to send him a message. All I can offer is a raised glass, a toast, a “Here’s looking at you kid”, for the second time, for real. Or as he would have said, “Love ya, babydoll.”

CaB Magazine, Commentary

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