Fiction Book Reviews

Still busy with school, natch; not doing quite as much pleasure-reading (for instance, I read the first couple chapters of Catch-22 the other day because I’ll be presenting on it for a class, and so far I haven’t been able to force myself to read more because I hate Yossarian so much). I’m still working on some reviews. I’m also coming across far too many giveaways that I’m sure I won’t win, but you never know so why not, which is why I’m sharing them: because anybody can win and others might be interested, and…okay, it means more entries for me, whatever. (At least I’m honest.)

• Steam Powered Rings - I’m not sure how much I’ve mentioned this here, but I really like steampunk. I think the only book I’ve read that I could definitively say was steampunk would be Perdido Street Station, which is unfortunate because I’d love to hunt down some more (and could do with a bit less of the “punk” elements, more of the steam-driven, Victorian-inspired, clocks-and-gears bits). But steampunk isn’t just a genre; it’s a style, too, which means you can find things like steampunk computers, clothes, and music all over the internet, assuming you can pay for them. You can also find steampunk jewelry, and Steam Powered Rings is full of truly gorgeous pieces like this and this and this, which all adds up to a big WANT for me and then I cry because I don’t have a lot of money. But: if you’re long on EntreCard credits and short on real money, you can get a ring for 6,000 EC in the EC Market (I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of working toward this and adding up how long it would take if I made lots and lots of drops), and there’s also a giveaway during February, March, and April for a ring.
• Lil Wayne John, a web-developer and blogger, is giving away 10,000 EC credits . To enter, you have to submit your blog to the directory Link Listings, which could be useful in pulling a bit of traffic anyway.
• Christian Carders - You might have noticed that a few of the books I’ve reviewed–Soon and Firebird, for instance–are Christian fiction, so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I’m a Christian too. Admittedly, I find a lot of Christian fiction to be poorly written, which is kind of sad, and I don’t read as much of it anymore; but I’m pretty likely to talk about it when I find one, and my worldview will still probably leak in through my reviews a bit. Anyway, there’s a community for Christian bloggers with EntreCard, and if that definition fits you and you’d like to join, visit Christian Carders.
• Bloggers Give - Momstart is hosting an EC credit giveaway to benefit Bloggers Give, a site where bloggers make a difference by giving their time and resources to help those in need.

Right. Now to start that paper that’s due tomorrow. And this was supposed to be quick…

I’ve tried to explain, more than once, why I’m drawn to science fiction and fantasy. It’s a little easier when I’m talking about why I write it–I say things about how it means less research (this is not entirely true. Worldbuilding done well generally requires enormous amounts of research. But it does mean that I don’t have to drive myself completely bats trying to make sure I’m accurate to this historical detail or this aspect of such-and-such a real place–creating histories and settings of my own gives me an awful lot of freedom that way), how it allows me to explore ideas that might be rejected out of hand by readers in familiar, real-world situations but can be slipped in and actually considered if they’re dressed in new guises, and I have a virtually unlimited number of ways to look at those ideas. I love finding the universal and human among the unfamiliar and the alien. Besides, it’s just fun.

It comes down to all the same reasons, I suppose, if I’m asked why I prefer reading fantasy and sci-fi, but somehow that’s always harder to answer; usually I can’t come up with anything better than “…I don’t know, I just like it better, I guess…” It’s especially unfortunate that I often feel the need to defend my favorite genres, but I suppose most kinds of genre fiction will inspire similar reactions among people that aren’t into those genres.

Well. Not terribly long ago, I came across a link in Sherwood Smith’s blog to a review of George Eliot’s Middlemarch–and yeah, Middlemarch has nothing to do with speculative fiction, and yeah, I haven’t read it. But in explaining why Eliot would’ve made a wonderful science fiction writer, Jo Walton also manages to describe perfectly both the special freedoms and special dangers of fantasy and sci-fi:

In science fiction you can have any kind of story—a romance or a mystery or a reflection of human nature, or anything at all. But as well as that, you have infinite possibility. You can tell different stories about human nature when you can compare it to android nature, or alien nature. You can examine it in different ways when you can write about people living for two hundred years, or being relativistically separated, or under a curse. You have more colours for your palette, more lights to illuminate your scene.

Now the problem with genre fiction is often that writers take those extra lights and colours and splash them around as if the fact that the result is shiny is sufficient, which it unfortunately isn’t. So the most common failing of genre fiction is that you get shallow stories with feeble characters redeemed only by the machinations of evil wizards or the fascinating spaceship economy or whatever. What I want is stories as well written and characterised as Middlemarch, but with more options for what can happen. That’s what I always hope for, and that’s what I get from the best of SF.

If Eliot could have taken her SFnal sensibility and used it to write SF, she could have swung the whole course of literature into a different channel. She could have changed the world. All the great writers who followed her would have had all the options of SF, instead of the circumscribed limitations of the mimetic world.

Now go back and read it again, especially the first paragraph and the bolded bits. Because this…this is why I write SF. Because it’s bigger than the everyday world, deeper, wider, more fascinating. Because I dwell in possibility.

Also, I really want to read some good steampunk now, after reading about how much the advent of the railroad shows up in Middlemarch.

I first watched Star Wars when I was fairly young–my parents showed me the Death Star scene at the end of A New Hope after we rode Star Tours in Disneyland when I was six, and I think we watched the whole trilogy not long after–but it’s safe to say that Kathy Tyers’ Firebird trilogy (Firebird, Fusion Fire, and Crown of Fire, republished in 2004 as a three-in-one version) was my first true introduction to science fiction and the reason I fell so much in love with reading and writing it. I came across Firebird on the Christian Book Distributors website when I was in 8th or 9th grade, I think, browsing for something to read when I mostly read Christian books anyway and, I imagine, was getting tired of a lot of the Christian stuff that was available for my age group (in fairness, some of it is genuinely good, but a significant portion is…well, just as lousy as mainstream YA novels, but more moralizing). I fell in love right away and started looking for more Christian sci-fi; I didn’t really have a clue that there’s precious little of it out there. (End-times fiction is a genre all its own, one I really don’t care for anyway despite being mildly obssessed with the Left Behind books when I was younger and dumber. It’s a good thing my taste has improved since then.)

Re-reading the Firebird trilogy from the standpoint of someone whose reading horizons have broadened considerably in the past almost-decade, it’s hard for me to say how much appeal these books would have for a wider audience, in part because they still belong quite firmly in my comfort-reading category…but I think they would have that appeal, if only they weren’t so obscure. (Even the more recent three-in-one edition, published only five years ago, is now out of print. Sigh.) The world-building is pretty solidly defined but not overwhelming, characters are well-drawn, and anyway you’ve got fun stuff like genetically engineered telepaths (described by one reviewer as “Jedi Jews for Jesus”) and a totalitarian regime/religion that demands the death of extraneous heirs in any of the noble houses. Firebird, the protagonist, is of course one of these heirs with an unnaturally short life expectancy, and Brennen Caldwell, at first her antagonist, is one of these “Jedi Jews for Jesus.” Also he’s awesome and was my first fictional crush, for what it’s worth.

To be perfectly honest, though? My main reason for reviewing this here is that quite some time ago, and by that I mean in the neighborhood of three or four years, I convinced a Xanga acquaintance (I blogged on Xanga at the time) to read the Firebird books, after which she proclaimed on her blog that they were sappy but good like that was an indisputable fact. I happened to disagree, so she then posted a couple quotes as examples: one in Fusion Fire where Firebird wanted to wait to have this ceremony because it wasn’t that long after that of her 12-year-old niece, said niece had just been murdered along with her whole family, and Firebird didn’t want to put her mother-in-law through that kind of reminder so soon, and another in Firebird that goes something like “‘Hold me, Brenn!’ she cried. His arms tightened around her middle.” which conveniently leaves out the fact that they were basically flying a fighter jet at the time in a desperate attempt to get away from some bad guys, and more importantly, said jet was designed to fit exactly one person and they had to fit two, so he wore the seatbelt and she sat in front of him so she could pilot. Meaning that while she’s doing loops and crap to outmanuever the bad guys chasing them, the only thing keeping her from sliding off the seat and into the windshield (okay…I’m sure it wasn’t called that) and effectively crashing them both is, yes, him holding her. Sappy? Maybe–I don’t really think so–but those examples just aren’t.

Um. Yes. I am pathetic for feeling the need to declare this years later in a place where the original poster will probably never come across it. But I hate it whenever I mean to say something and don’t, so…there. It’s said. I can go to bed now. :p

(Spoilers throughout, because…the book kind of sucks and I really don’t care enough to keep it spoiler-free? In fairness, I should also add that I wrote this without having read any other books in the Underground Zealot series, of which there are now three, looks like. …good God, I can’t even write “Underground Zealot” with a straight face.)

Ever since The Mark, I think, I’ve started losing respect for Jerry Jenkins. (As far as I’m concerned, Tim LaHaye doesn’t count.  I think he does research and maybe Tsion’s sermons—in other words, virtually none of the actual writing.)  I think he’s become too aware of his own popularity; he creates characters and kills them just to play with his readers’ emotions, but he’s stopped caring about the poor fools he creates. (more…)

I don’t really know what to think about this book.

As a rule, I love Diana Wynne Jones’ work. Dark Lord of Derkholm was my first introduction to her novels; I think I first picked it up at the library because its cover looked so very, very cliched, I wanted to see what it was about and have a laugh at it.  Joke was on me, of course, because parodying fantasy cliches is one of the whole points of that book, along with a plot that’s fantastic in its own right, a lot of humor, and a family of wizards and griffins that bicker like crazy and still love each other to death. It’s one of those books where you’ve got a huge grin on your face when you finish because it’s just that much fun. Not all of her books are quite as good–the older ones like A Tale of Time City a bit less so, seems like, and I found Fire and Hemlock and Hexwood good but confusing (the former gets bonus points just for being a Tam Lin retelling, though)–but generally speaking you can’t go wrong with them, especially the Chrestomanci books.

The Homeward Bounders, though…I dunno, really. It’s…very different from her others. Oh, it shares a lot in common with others–even in books that aren’t actually related, she uses the idea of parallel worlds and dimensions all the time (I can think of at least five different books or series of hers that have nothing to do with each other but use alternate worlds in one way or another, and generally in different ways), and most of hers have young protagonists who end up having to save the world, often finding themselves faced with very difficult choices in the process.

But most of her books have an enemy that can, in some way, be known–the villains here are only referred to as They–and I’m pretty sure all her other characters get happy endings in one way or another. In this, you can kind of see the ending coming by the way the book begins and by hints the narrator drops along the way, and it’s not like it’s a bad ending exactly, but…it’s different. I found it depressing, to be honest, though I can’t say much more without entirely giving it away.

(It’s probably not too surprising, though, that I immediately thought of the perfect fix-it fic: the Doctor shows up, puts things properly to rights, and takes Jamie home in the TARDIS. This would of course allow the Doctor to angst about how he can never go home, but whatever.)

Good novels require the presence—and cooperation, I suppose—of a number of elements. In some cases, one or two elements may be so strong and compellingly written that they make up almost completely for the absence or shallowness of other elements. Take the Doctor Who episode “Blink,” for example, though it’s not a novel: if you think too hard about the plot or the logistics of the villains, the whole thing starts to fall apart, but the character interactions, dialogue, creepiness factor, and direction are so awesome you don’t mind, if you even notice. I certainly didn’t. Or take Diana Wynne Jones’ Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin: the former’s climax is a bit confusing and the latter’s is a bit anticlimactic, but both are such a fun read with such great characterization that I really didn’t care. (It’s probably a good indicator of this that I really want to own them because I want to cuddle them and read them over and over, because both leave me with a huge grin on my face. They’re just fun.)You can’t depend on that, of course, because one or two of these important elements are not meant to carry an entire story. That’s why there are several, after all. And if your story does end up depending primarily on a really cool plot or some amazing worldbuilding or a fantastic character but not more than one of the above, say, you had better hope that one element is really good.

Rhiannon Lassiter’s Hex has a fascinating premise with a lot of potential. And among all those various elements, a strong premise is the least able to support an entire novel.

The hex gene is a mutation that allows those who have it to access computers on an organic sort of level, allowing those who develop their abilities to become superhuman hackers. But they’re viewed as dangerous—and in this far-future and slightly dystopian London, with almost everything controlled by computers, it’s not hard to understand why. So there’s a law in place: anyone discovered to be a Hex will be arrested and destroyed immediately.

That’s good so far as it goes, and Lassiter does some creative things in portraying the rather alien Hex-computer interactions, but she falls short everywhere else. The plot meanders a bit and then goes in odd places in an apparent attempt to be edgy that comes across as the literary equivalent of a goth poser, and none of the main characters are as cool as Lassiter seems to think they are—certainly not cool enough to make up for the unlikable aspects of their personalities. You’ve got Wraith (yes, really), seen through other characters’ eyes as a natural leader who always knows what to do, and who gives absolutely no indication of such traits from his POV. You’ve got his sister, Raven (yes , really), who wears mostly black and is super awesome because she’s a Hex and thinks she can do anything, but instead of being awesome, she mostly seems to lack impulse-control, a moral compass, common sense, any of that fun stuff. Worse, the writing itself was little more than mediocre, making the other flaws even more noticeable.

In fairness, Hex is actually the first of a trilogy, and I haven’t been able to read the other two yet, so the characterization may well improve. Lassiter also published this trilogy when she was 19, which explains—but  shouldn’t—some of Hex’s shortcomings (and also makes me jealous, because I know my writing style was at least better than hers at 19…).

Still, on the plus side? At least she’s not Christopher Paolini .