Zima Blue, by Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Reynolds is one of my favourite SF authors, so when this volume arrived it was sufficient to overcome my normal preference for novel length work. The short story collection Zima Blue demonstrates all the same virtues as Reynolds’ novels: a compelling vision of myriad possible futures, allied with a convincing grasp of cutting-edge science, and a powerful writing style.
The stories ‘Signal to Noise’ and ‘Cardiff Afterlife”, set in the same near future reality, explore different aspects of technology enabling communication between parallel worlds. The former, a novella-length piece, explores the impact of such tech on human relationships, when a man who has lost his wife manages to actually cross the gap and spend time with a different version of her. It’s an affecting tale, with good characterisation (not always Reynolds’ strong suit) – perhaps the near-future setting stops the characters being overshadowed by the concept. In ‘Cardiff Afterlife’ we have a short exploration of the impact that the reality-spanning technology could have on civil liberties, as well as the change on peoples’ perceptions of their own mortality.
The Night Sessions, by Ken MacLeod
Jennie reviews the fourth and final book from the BSFA Best Novel Award 2009 shortlist:
I feel as if I should begin this review with a confession. It’s fairly tame, as confessions go, but it does have direct bearing on how very much I enjoyed The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod. So, I just thought you should know that I am a Battlestar Galactica junky, and I love Isaac Asimov. And Ian Rankin. I am predisposed to enjoy books featuring possible futures of mankind and robots, also space elevators. Add mystery? Excellent! Night Sessions delivers, and although it has the occasional moment where the details included in the future seem just too *perfect* to be real, it is an enjoyable and riveting read.
It begins with a brief prologue that sets up the premise of a possible future. There, in this futuristic Scotland, religion is, officially, no one’s business. After years of war and terrorism, there was a great rejection of religion, and those who still believe, like John Richard Campbell, operate in a legal no-man’s land. The world has changed, and now humans coexist uncomfortably with sentient robots. Some of the robots work as mechanics in the upper atmosphere and keep the space elevators working. Some are part of the police force, ripped from their war-time combat bodies to ones more suited for protect and serve. Some, though, have begun looking into religion, and John Richard Campbell now has a group of robots that listen to him preach–which brings him to the attention of a small Scottish sect.
Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles, by Harriet Lamb
Fair Trade has been around for a few years now and for most of us has had to share voice in the public domain with the competing virtues of organic, carbon-neutral, free-range and non-GM amongst others. If you want to know what it stands for, where it started, how it’s doing and what you can do to help, this is a book for you.
In it, Harriet Lamb - director of the Fair Trade Foundation - talks us first-hand through the journey of the movement from the banana fields of Central America to meetings with M&S via the successful launch of the first bar of Green and Blacks’ Maya Gold. It is a detailed diary of what she and the movement have had to face to get as far as they have done. There are some heart-rending accounts in here, of farmers who have either been made infertile by the pesticides they have been forced to use or have seen hideous deformation of their newly-born children. It’s truly upsetting to read that something as simple as buying your bananas from Sainsbury’s instead of ASDA can have such a direct impact on the livelihood of others. And we’re talking about aspects of their lives which we would take for granted like basic health and water supply. One can’t help but feel that if we in the Western world knew of a group of countries who could dramatically improve on our welfare and levels of poverty with such simple acts as changing which brand they supported, wars would be waged without a second’s hesitation.
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Raymond Chandler today, Hamish Hamilton have reissued five of his key novels with their original early-edition hardback covers. Jennie checked out The Big Sleep for Bookgeeks.
Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep traffics in shades of grey. Women are wicked but reformable; men are lethal but protective; crime, and murder, are occasionally an honourable option. But though the moral colouring of the characters may be questionable, the novel itself is filled with garish and lush descriptions of the tumultuous city of Los Angeles and the California countryside.
The Big Sleep is Chandler’s first Philip Marlowe novel, and the reader meets him at
about eleven o’ clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be.
This wash of specific description, interspersed with some of the sparest and most fantastic dialogue ever written, makes the book. Because the story is told as a monologue from Marlowe’s point of view, the reader is enthralled, fooled, and angered along with him. This makes what could be a very unsympathetic character extremely compelling. With Marlowe’s eyes and conclusions the only ones available, he is the knight is dented armour that he claims to be, no matter what his actions may look like to the outside observer. Read more
A Madness of Angels, by Kate Griffin
Here’s a great illustration of why it helps not to know anything about an author when reviewing a book. I was favourably impressed by A Madness of Angels, and all set to write a very positive review, but after doing my cursory research, I am a little bit stunned – because Kate Griffin is actually a pen name for Catherine Webb. This is her first book for adults (she’s written seven for young adults), and she’s still only 22. My enjoyment of the book would have not been any the less had I known, but I might have had to keep stopping to think thoughts involving words like ‘precocious’ and other things that would make me sound a) jealous and b) old. I shall now try to write this review as if I didn’t know anything about the young whippersnapper… sorry, author.
A Madness of Angels is the very embodiment of urban fantasy, that fusion of escapism and grimy reality that is continuing to grow in popularity as an alternative to classic or high fantasy. More than that, it’s very specifically London fantasy – like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, it plays with the idea that in a city the size of our capital, there are considerable hidden depths. Griffin lets her imagination run wild in painting a picture of the London of beggars and bikers, rats, pigeons and foxes, special graffiti, mystical significance and magical energy that’s everywhere if you know where to look. There is more to the Underground than meets the eye (the Last Train, which never stops trundling around the Circle Line), and there’s an alternate aristocracy, in the form of the Beggar King and the Bag Lady. And if you’ve ever looked down on a Yellow Pages abandoned on the top of a bus shelter and wondered how it got there – well, apparently these special editions contain extra sections specifically for the discerning magical personage.
This Is Not A Game, by Walter Jon Williams
This Is Not A Game – the novel… It is not often that a book subject is truly unique. This book is the first ever to be written about ARGs or Alternate Reality Games.
Like Williams we need to describe exactly what ARGs are before we can get on with the book proper. Put simply they are online games involving communities of players that crossover into real life. So for example the “game” may require the players to pick up a package from a real-life shop or meet at a real location. Games usually last at least a couple of weeks and there have been a number of examples. For more info on this check out Wikipedia.
TINAG is narrated by Dagmar and Williams describes how she sees the world. Dagmar is a puppetmaster, or gamesmaster. It is she who creates the ARGs for others to play. The whole book is about the unreality of what she sees – when her fictional game creations merge with real life. In many ways this is a classic pulp fiction mystery, but the ARG element adds that extra spark.
The Absence, by Bill Hussey
Bill Hussey’s 2008 debut novel, Through a Glass, Darkly, was a convincing tale of supernatural terror with a compelling edge of contemporary darkness, brought forth from a mind deeply immersed in the Great British horror tradition, but with an imagination certainly not mired in its too-easily clichéd trappings – a fine combination indeed. Now it’s that ‘second book time’, (as it is for Hussey’s fellow Bloody Books inmate Joseph D’Lacey; his The Garbage Man, is out in May), and in The Absence Hussey has delivered a shuddering experience of family struggles, Fen myth and disorientating madness that does not disappoint.
On the surface, the Nightingales are a pretty dysfunctional set of individuals attempting to maintain, in very differing ways, their family unit. Their already unhappy lives were ripped apart seven months ago when Janet, the mother of Joe and Bobby Nightingale, was killed in a car crash. The fact that Joe was driving has left the brothers in confrontational turmoil, but perhaps the biggest emotional rift has emerged between the brothers and their father, Richard, who has retreated into a place of alcohol, silence and ‘what-ifs’. Joe and Bobby Nightingale cannot forgive him. The family is given a chance to put aside their differences for a time, when out of the blue, Richard is informed that he has inherited the old Daecher Mill from an unknown relative, Muriel Sutton.
Vote for the Galaxy British Book Awards online
You can vote for a several of Bookgeeks’ favourite books of last year in the Galaxy British Book Awards, including The Gargoyle and The Mighty Book of Boosh – and if you vote you will be entered in to a draw to win £200 worth of book tokens.
Vote for the Galaxy British Book Awards
Josh Bazell, author of Beat the Reaper
Josh Bazell has a BA in writing from Brown University and a MD from Columbia University. He has worked as a screenwriter, and while in medical school investigated suspicious deaths for the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York. He is currently a medical resident at the University of California, San Francisco, and is working on his second novel. We recently read and enjoyed his fusion of medicine and the Mob, debut Beat the Reaper (review), and we chatted with him about his writing and the US medical system.
For our traditional opener: are you a bookgeek?
Books have been important to me my whole life, but after reading Nightmare Alley I’ve stopped referring to anyone who doesn’t actually bite the heads off chickens as a geek. Which I guess makes the answer “Yes.”
Patient Zero, by Jonathan Maberry
Jonathan Maberry‘s got a history. A history that involves zombies. His previous book, Zombie CSU, was an attempt to draw together all the factors that might cause and spread an undead outbreak, and examine said factors with a detached forensic magnifying glass, or more likely, a powerful electron microscope. This history has obviously contributed to his latest novel, his first in the UK via Gollancz, Patient Zero.
In a recent interview Maberry commented that Patient Zero is a thriller – and there’s no denying that it is indeed a fast-paced and violent journey to prevent the spread of a spectacular plague developed by fundamentalist terrorists. There’s no denying that this plague kills and reanimates humans, the result being fast, strong, bloodthirsty, flesh-eating zombies. So is it a thriller, is it horror? Who cares? Patient Zero is a wonderful bio-apocalypse-in-the-making accompaniment to David Moody’s Hater, also recently published by Gollancz.
Raven: Blood Eye, by Giles Kristian
It sometimes seems there are two types of historical novel published in the UK: those with Bernard Cornwell’s endorsement on the cover, and those without. Cornwell is the daddy of historical fiction, and generous to his competition with it, and Raven hit the bookshops with his name adorning the cover. I mention this firstly because committed Cornwell fans will always be looking for similar new books to fill the gaps between his own works being published, and because Giles Kristian’s debut is, if anything, the work of an author who has taken the Cornwell formula and improved on it.
It would be easy to write this entire review as a comparison between Raven and Cornwell’s own Dark Age tales of Vikings in England. The similarities are significant: both concern a young warrior with loyalties divided between his home land and the camaraderie of the raiding Vikings (although the word Viking is seldom used in either – Cornwell’s are Danes and Kristian’s Norsemen). Both seek to gain maximum mileage from the contrast between the emergent Christian faith and the dark paganism of the Vikings. And both have lots of swords, shield walls, blood and guts and violent adventure.
The Case of the Imaginary Detective, by Karen Joy Fowler
The Case of the Imaginary Detective is not really a mystery. Well, no more a mystery than any other work of fiction that deals with the secrets at the heart of a family. There is a central question, a heroine looking for clues, and, in the distant past, a murder, but the story itself shunts these standard elements to the side. In fact, the lack of sharp focus on a central crime allows other mysteries to pop up and proliferate, a garden of questions and puzzles for the heroine to wander in. The setting, Santa Cruz, California, and the characters all conspire to create a novel that dissolves when stared at too hard, that requires its readers to wade through the same mist of grief that envelops its heroine. It is a quiet novel, with a deft touch at both the comedy that finds its way into, and the tragedy that punctuates, everyone’s lives.
It begins with an orphan, Rima Lanisell, arriving at the Santa Cruz seaside mansion of her godmother, famous mystery novelist A.E. Early. This mansion, with the fantastic name of “Wit’s End”, houses her godmother, two dachshunds, a live-in assistant, and a collection of doll houses that illustrate in minute and perfect detail the murders that made A.E. Early and her creation, Maxwell Lane, famous.
The Third Bookgeeks SF and Fantasy Author Panel – “The Others”
Welcome to the third Bookgeeks SF and Fantasy Author panel. Once again, we asked some of the leading lights of SF and Fantasy to give us their thoughts on a specific issue that affects them all as both writers and fans – and they said they would! Third time around, here’s what we asked our authors to ruminate on:
Both the science fiction and fantasy genres have a traditional reliance on ‘others’ – from extra-terrestrials and elves to angels and demons, these non-human protagonists are often central to the story. How do you set out to create plausible ‘others’ (do they even need to be plausible?), and make sure that readers relate to them in the ways that you want?
Meet the Panel
| Alex Bell
Alex Bell was born in 1986. She always wanted to be a writer but had several different back-up plans to ensure she didn’t end up in the poor house first. These didn’t work, so she started writing, and her second book got her an agent, while her third, written during her first summer holidays off from university, found a home with Gollancz. The Ninth Circle came out in April 2008. Now she happily dwells in an entirely make-believe world of blood, death, madness, murder and mayhem. The doctors have advised that it is best not to disturb her, for she appears to be happy there. |
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| Michael Cobley
Mike Cobley was born in Leicester, 1959, went to school in Clydebank, then attended the University of Strathclyde, to study engineering. He began to write with a serious intention in 1986 and is thus far the author of three novels, the Shadowkings Trilogy, and one short story collection, Iron Mosaic. His new space opera novel, Seeds Of Earth, is published in March 2009 by Orbit Books. Mike is an unreconstructed heavy metal fan, and finds FPS video games an inspiring way to justify procrastination. |
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| Kate Elliott
Kate Elliott lives in Pennsylvania, USA. In addition to the Crown of Stars series, she is co-author of The Golden Key. Her nineteenth novel, Traitors’ Gate, Book Three of the Crossroads Trilogy, will be published in Autumn 2009 by Tor Books (USA) and Orbit UK; book two, Shadow Gate, was recently reviewed on Bookgeeks. |
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| Jaine Fenn
Jaine Fenn studied Linguistics and Astronomy at university. She has had a number of short stories published, and has an active blog at www.jainefenn.com. Principles of Angels is her first novel, and a second set in the same universe, Consorts of Heaven, will be published in May 2009. |
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| P.C. Hodgell
P. C. Hodgell is the author of the God Stalker series currently being reissued by Baen: God Stalk and Dark of the Moon in the omnibus The God-Stalker Chronicles; Seeker’s Mask and To Ride a Rathorn (to be released in July 2009) in Seeker’s Bane. The fifth in the series, Bound in Blood, was recently turned in in manuscript. Pat lives, teaches, knits, and falls off horses in Wisconsin. |
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The Untold History of the Potato, by John Reader
Bookgeeks is pleased to welcome our newest reviewer, Sam, with a review of a book that explores the history of one of our most ubiquitous foodstuffs.
A fascinating example of world history as focused on one object, in the same genre as Cod and The Pencil. In fact after reading this book its hard not to relate the whole existence of the industrial revolution, western dominance – in short world history – to the humble potato. But this is the joy and the problem with this genre; in the end everything is seen through the ‘eyes’ of the potato. To be fair to Reader, he is always at pains to say that the potato is not the cause but one of many factors in such occasions.
The book is laid out in a thoroughly logical, largely historical, order and doesn’t jump around too much. In its way this structure is made easier by the actual path of the potato through history – its influence jumps from continent to continent in fairly linear order. The book can be seen in several stages – discovery in South America, Europe’s discovery and take-up, the Irish Potato famine and the attempts to quell Late Blight, the modern era of farming. But again Reader is a pro at keeping late blight and the Irish Potato Famine as a watermark – disease and control of the potato diseases are harly ever mentioned before the mid-section of the book.
Bookgeeks Reading Group Highlights: The Bird Room, by Chris Killen
The Bookgeeks Virtual Reading Group got together (virtually, of course), to talk about Chris Killen’s bijou debut The Bird Room; here are some of the best bits of the discussion, including what we talked about when Chris dropped in to answer some questions…
SA: So, let’s get the discussion kicked off with some talking points:
Do you think the author’s focus on trivial and mundane aspects of his characters’ lives is significant?
Is the life that William ends up with solely a consequence of his own choices? Do others (Alice, Will) have some responsibility?
Do you think The Bird Room is a book about mental illness?
At what point did you work out that the man paying Helen was William (the narrator), rather than Will (the artist)?
Does William inadvertently redeem Helen by offering to pay her for sex?
By telling William that she was once in an amateur porno, does Anna sow the seeds of his subsequent obsession?
How much of what’s in the book actually happened, and how much is in William and Helen’s minds?
Did you get confused between William and Will? Do you think the confusion over the names was necessary to make the story work?
Would you recommend this book to people and what would you say to recommend it?
Stratton’s War by Laura Wilson
As sharks and Nazis are to the History Channel, so WW2 novels are to historical crime fiction and Laura Wilson’s Stratton’s War is a recent and enjoyable addition to the Home Front, Blitz-based sub-genre. Better than Robert Harris, on a par with Barbara Nadel, Stratton’s War threatens to approach the level of a good John Lawton.
The story centres around DI Ted Stratton of West End Central and Diana Calthrop, a beautiful Mayfair deb straight out of the world of the Mitfords. Stratton is investigating the suicide of a silent movie star that somehow points toward Soho gangland. Diana has just started work for MI5 infiltrating the high society, anti-Semitic, pro-German, Right Club. Inevitably Stratton’s murder enquiry and Diana’s counter espionage work cross-over.
Beat the Reaper, by Josh Bazell
With his debut novel, doctor Josh Bazell has combined two major tropes of American popular culture – the New Jersey mob and the medical drama – and managed to enrich both of them. Beat the Reaper is a powerful and compelling thriller, with a great narrative voice and some dark, driving prose.
Dr Peter Brown, aka Pietro Brnwa, aka The Bearclaw is on his way to his hospital shift when a would-be mugger discovers that there is more to him than meets the eye – because before he went in to Witness Protection and studied medicine, Peter was a hitter for the Mafia. Inspired initially by the need for revenge over the killers of his grandparents, Peter fell in with the offspring of a Mafia lawayer, a delightful article taking the nickname of Skinflick, and gradually became a reliable freelance killer, though (importantly for maintaining our sympathies, perhaps) only of people who were demonstrably immoral, people who the world was better off without.
The Hidden, by Tobias Hill
When you read voraciously, sometimes you fall into the habit of assuming that you’ve seen it all. Every plot twist. Every surprise reveal. Everything. You may enjoy a book, but are rarely surprised by it. Luckily, every once in awhile, a book comes along to remind you that this is hubris, that there are still moments where a corner will be turned so sharply that the only possible response is surprise. Tobias Hill‘s The Hidden is one of those books.
It begins with a rootless wandering professor, Ben Mercer. Estranged from his wife and distant from his daughter, he came to Greece with a vague sense of purpose and no plan. He ends up, for a time, cooking and serving in a Athens grill. A chance meeting there with an acquaintance from Oxford leads him to an archaeological dig and the hidden secrets, both modern and ancient, buried in what was once Sparta.
The Decisive Moment – How the Brain Makes Up Its Mind, by Jonah Lehrer
The hardback edition of The Decisive Moment is adorned with a shiny, red, embossed button that says in large capital letters ‘DON’T PRESS’. As my copy slid out of the envelope, I can report that without a great deal of conscious thought, the first thing I did was reach out and press that button, thus (I hope) nicely illustrating the central thesis of Johan Lehrer’s excellent book.
Lehrer is interested in the science of decision making. He is particularly interested in the distinction between the rational and the emotional brain, and illustrates persuasively what the differences are and what kinds of decisions each one is best able to make. The emotional brain, which is powered by the chemical dopamine, is capable of learning what works and what doesn’t in a given situation, and is what provides intuition and gut instinct. When this book slid out of the envelope, I imagine my emotional brain had a fairly solid idea that nothing bad ever happened to someone who pressed a button on the front of a book, hence the irresistible urge to press it right now. If my rational brain, the part that we use for making more complicated decisions, was brought to bear, it would have reached the same conclusion, but would have travelled by a different route entirely, and taken longer.
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Kat Falls
Kat Falls grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and now teaches at NU, where she is continually inspired by her students’ creativity. She started writing Dark Life as a writing exercise. Knowing that her 12-year-old son loved reading about the ocean, Wild West pioneers and, of course, the X-Men, she combined his interests and created the premise for a story that kept her up nights plotting and world-building.
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The Book That...
Robert Lloyd Parry: The Book I Would Like To Be Buried With…
This special twentieth Bury Me… features grand panjandrum and actor Robert Lloyd Parry, the man behind the Nunkie Theatre Company, responsible for many an uneasy evening with the master of English supernatural stories…
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The Bookgeeks Competition
The Richard T. Kelly Column
Richard T. Kelly
Richard T. Kelly’s exclusive monthly column, in which he addresses various matters literary, writers and their books, the publishing business and his own experiences as a writer. Richard is a novelist, screenwriter, biographer and journalist, and you can read his column exclusively on our sister site, Bookhugger.co.uk.Connect with Bookgeeks
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