Tag: Book Review

Book review: Monster Hunter Nemesis

I am not a Monster Hunter International fan. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I WAS NOT a Monster Hunter International fan before this, the fifth book in the Monster Hunter series. While I stand second-to-none in my respect for their intrepid best-selling author, I found the first four books in the series to be a little too vanilla urban fantasy for my tastes. Violent vanilla, to be sure, even XXXtreme vanilla, but vanilla nonetheless. Which isn’t to say that they are not fun and entertaining; they are, in fact, exactly the sort of books that harbor great appeal to red-blooded men who like big guns and pretty women with big breasts, and who are willing to defend civilization and society as the hard men standing between the monsters and the innocent.

Translation: I liked Mack Bolan back in the day too. This doesn’t mean I ever confused it with great literature. Or even interesting literature.

I found Correia’s Grimnoir Chronicles to be of considerably more interest. Unlike most Western authors, Correia is able to write a respectful portrayal of the Japanese warrior culture without coming off as the sort of obsessed round-eye who puts on a red kimono to drink ocha every afternoon. (I am an East Asian Studies major who spent a semester abroad in Tokyo, and I still speak a smattering of Japanee. So I knew a few guys like that.) I also found that the Grimnoir characters, despite their superhuman abilities, were more fully developed and interesting than their MHI counterparts.

So, what was fascinating about reading Monster Hunter Nemesis was to see the way Correia upped his game and took the book to a higher level. The way in which he did so was rather remarkable, because he somehow managed to improve the depth and scope of his writing without sacrificing even one iota of the violence-fueled action of the previous books.

In the first four books, Agent Franks is little more than a superweapon and an repetitive joke: “Oh shit, it’s Franks!” As with most street drugs and urban fantasy series, Correia finds it necessary to keep raising the oppositional ante in order to maintain the reader’s interest, which might seem a little conceptually challenging considering that the big boss at the end of the third book was an extradimensional Elder God and the collateral damage involved a considerable portion of the city of Las Vegas.

And so he raises the ante, but not in any of the cheap and obvious ways so common to lesser authors. Instead, Correia provides a backstory to his take on Frankenstein’s monster that is both more interesting and comprehensive than the customary one. This backstory, which is directly integral to the plot, is deftly revealed in vignettes as the current story plays out.

For the first time, Larry Correia draws upon his religious background, and in doing so he brings both intellectual depth and emotional poignancy to the world of Monster Hunter that it previously lacked. Franks is revealed to be far more than monstrous construct, he is shown to be a complex, noble being whose inhuman sociopathy is the logical consequence of his alien values, motivations, and restrictions.

Larry Correia may not win the Hugo Best Novel Award in 2014 for Warbound. But his Monster Hunter Nemesis is likely to be a contender for next year’s award. This is a very good book by a best-selling author who is confident in his ability and is beginning to hit his stride.

Characters (9/10)  Correia fleshes out existing characters both major and minor; his use of Heather the red-headed werewolf as a reluctant government agent desperate to earn her PUFF exception is particularly adroit. One of the major antagonists is well-portrayed, the other remains more than a bit of a mystery, and is alarmingly convincing in his ruthlessly efficient use and abuse of the bureaucratic power struggles between the various federal agencies.

Prose (7/10) One doesn’t read Correia for the stylistic pyrotechnics or the obscure literary allusions. It’s akin to contemplating the fuel-efficiency of a Lamborghini. That being said, his prose is smooth and easy, regardless of whether he is describing the splattering of a reanimated collection of corpses by a large, fast-moving vehicle or lovingly detailing the chambering action of a Glock* pistol. As an adept storyteller, Correia’s style serves as simple lubricant for the story, just as it should be. He does have a certain lamentable habit of throwing in the occasional conversational rimshot, all of which will no doubt one day appear verbatim in the television series. Hey, if it works for Richard Castle….

Plot (10/10)  A centuries-old contract between Franks and the U.S. government is being jeopardized by a grasping bureaucrat with a savior complex who rejects the idea that people in the past had legitimate reasons for doing as they did. Adroitly ties everything from Milton and Mary Shelley and Ben Franklin into the Monster Hunter mythos.

Ideas (8/10)  Correia is moving well beyond the usual werewolves and vampires of generic urban fantasy. He is drawing effectively upon history, his tactical training experience, and his religious background, to say nothing of his accountant’s eye view of government bureaucracy. Monster Hunter Nemesis is more than a mere action novel, it is an intelligent and occasionally thought-provoking action novel.

Text Sample:  There was a commotion on the other side of the tent flap. Guards gave challenges, IDs were presented, and then there was a rush of apologies. The flap opened and several men entered the giant command tent. The first through were members of the MCB’s elite mobile strike team. They were hardened warriors who Franks had served with many times, and behind them was an innocuous looking, middle aged man in a cheap suit.

Franks’ arms were chained to the chair, so he dipped his head slightly. “Sir.”

“Why is my second in command tied up?” Dwayne Myers, Strike Team SAC, demanded. “What’s the meaning of this?”

Foster’s response was about as belligerent as could be expected. “Agent Franks is charged with disobeying direct orders, violating security protocols by taking a civilian witness into a monster containment area, and then breaking into the Nevada storage facility to steal seized evidence.”

“Is that true?” Myers asked.

Franks nodded. That sounded about right, but Myers already knew most of the details, since it had secretly been his idea to begin with. Franks had taken Owen Pitt to Dugway because he’d thought the Monster Hunter’s psychic powers could help their investigation. He’d taken three ancient arcane weapons from Area 51 in order to fight the Nachtmar; Lord Machado’s ax, the Attilius gladius, and the Black Heart of Suffering. That last one had done the trick, and destroyed the creature.

“When he was confronted about his actions, Franks attempted to kill MCB Director Douglas Stark.”

Franks snorted. The five men covering him with drawn weapons backed away nervously. They were only following orders, but all of them had worked with Franks at some point, so they were aware that shooting Franks might upset him.

“I’ve known Agent Franks for twenty years. He doesn’t attempt to kill anyone. Holster those side arms and unchain him. Franks is coming with me.” Myers had recently been demoted, but had been the Acting Director before that, and he was still probably the most respected senior agent in the Bureau.

“Hold on,” Foster demanded. “Franks is in STFU custody.” It was almost like Foster thought that invoking the name of the ultra-secret Special Task Force Unicorn would strike fear into the federal agent’s hearts.

Myers glanced around theatrically. “Really? Because these appear to be MCB men, and last I checked sworn MCB agents don’t take orders from an operation that doesn’t exist.” The MCB didn’t officially exist either, as it was just a line item on the Department of Homeland Security’s budget, but in this business there were levels of not existing.

“Director Stark is—”

“Hiding from this giant clusterfuck caused by his lack of leadership,” Myers said. “Our good Director must have forgotten that is against regulation 72 dash B to turn MCB handling of a level five containment to another entity, such as yours, without authorization from the President. So in the meantime I’m the highest ranking member of the MCB available, and I’m making the call. Cut Franks loose. I’m going back outside to try and contain the unholy mess you amateurs made out of one of America’s most popular tourist attractions, before every news agency in the world records video of a street full of ectoplasm and dragon parts. Is that understood, Mr. Foster?”

It was clearly understood, but not particularly liked. “We’re not done, Myers.”

“Oh, I believe that we are.” Myers glanced over and confirmed that the men had put their weapons away. “Remove Mr. Foster from my command tent.”

“I’ve got it,” Franks said. One of the men had been looking for the key to the padlock, but Franks simply took up the chain in his bare hands and twisted until a link snapped. By the time anyone realized what was happening, the chains had already hit the floor and Franks had caught Foster by the arm and effortlessly lifted him off the ground. Foster winced in pain as Franks carried him to the nearest flap, and hurled the Unicorn operative into the street.

*Let no one henceforth say Larry Correia is homophobic. No doubt the LGBT community appreciated the little shout-out.

The Rods and the Axe: two reviews

DB is the first to review Tom Kratman’s THE RODS AND THE AXE.

This is the latest book in the ‘Carrera’ series by Tom Kratman. The story covers the activities leading up to and the beginning salvos of the second stage of the war between the Tauran Union (the EU) and Balboa (Panama). Now for those of you who wonder how the hell Panama could be in a war with the EU much less how it could manage to be kicking the EU’s sclerotic, bureaucratic ass you really have to read the ‘What has gone before’ section. Trust me when I say it is necessary there’s a lot that has happened to get the action to this point and a whole mess of characters that are important to the plot. When reading Tom Kratman you never know who is going to be an important character and who is going to wind up killed so you better pay attention.

So to the story itself. It is a good military adventure yarn. That should be no surprise by now, Kratman writes military adventure and whatever he does he does well. It is just barely science fiction. Yes it is set on a different planet, yes there is marginally advanced technology, but this series is really just an alternate history of what could have been done following September 11th. It could just as easily been set on Earth beginning Sept 11, 2001.

The story is well written and for me the easiest of the series to read and follow. I was never left wondering ‘who is this and what are they doing’. The action is realistic and of course plenty gritty. The characters were as usual interesting and drawn just as finely as they needed to be for the part they played in the story. Most of the book is taken up with behind the scenes type of political wrangling and espionage but there still are big meaty chunks of combat and conflict.

The Good: “The Rods and the Axe” is well written, the prose is clear and clean without anything extraneous getting into the way. The people, places, and activities on ‘Terra Nova’ are presented in well crafted brush strokes. Even the characters that are seen once and will never be seen again were easy to envision. Some would say Kratman makes good use of stereotype but I prefer to think of his bright-line characterization of minor characters as solid use of easily understood motifs.

The characters are easy to connect to and visualize. Motivations fit the characters and the actions they take except for one really jarring scene (more about that later), are never forced. The actions feel like they are the real actions of the characters and not something that Kratman has decreed for the characters to do everything feels very organic. One thing that Kratman is very good at is people and he easily acknowledges that every side can have heroes. The enemies can be just as well intentioned, heroic as Carrera and his Legion and are certainly as well written.

The organizations of Terra Nova are realistic and Kratman does a good job of describing them. Of course, that is not a huge stretch because Terra Nova is really just ‘Earth’. Every nation and organization has its counterpart on Terra Nova.

Not much to say about Kratman’s gift for writing military action that has not already been said. The action whether it is a bar fight with broken bottles or a naval gunnery barrage with 150mm guns is all well written. The pacing of the action is particularly good and will keep you reading (I read the book in one sitting). Kratman is a master of his craft and belongs with Drake or Pournelle when discussing good military science fiction.

One thing and perhaps this is just a matter of personal taste but I like that while Kratman’s characters are fully adult and human and have sex the sex is all ‘off screen’ and fade to black type of activities. I find that refreshing.

The Bad: Here’s the good news; nothing ‘bad’ about this novel. The story is first rate, the characters are well written and interesting and the action is realistic and visceral. But there is that one scene I mentioned earlier and that’s ugly.

The Ugly: First let me say that I know Kratman is one sneaky bastard (I mean that as a compliment) and that he knows where his stories are going a long way a head, however, Carrera makes a really jarring bonehead move that stood out like a green stick fracture. At one point he has Carrera going into a major conflict zone for (at this point in the story) no damn good reason. It is such a bad decision that I had a hard time getting past that. It was like Ike landing with the grunts at Utah Beach. I know Kratman is probably just setting us up for something that requires Carrera to be where he is but the action itself was double-stupid and his aides should have sat on him until he regained his senses. I won’t say anything more about that because that would give away too much of the plot.

All in all I cannot recommend this book enough. If you at all like military fiction you’ll like this book and if you do like military fiction and haven’t found this series yet you are in for a treat. Kratman has stepped up his game with this book and is now firmly in the top tier of military fiction not just military science fiction.

And JW has already read it and finished his review as well. The speed with which these gentlemen blew through the book should also tell you something about whether Tom Kratman’s latest is worthwhile for fans of military science fiction.

Tom Kratman has out his sixth novel in the Carrera series, and it’s a worthy addition indeed. The Legion del Cid, with Patricio Carrera in command, has kicked the Tauran Union forces occupying the Balboa transitway out, in bloody fighting. In Book 6 they are concerned with the final preparation for the invasion of the Taurans and their Zhong allies, and, then the beginning of an epic battle for the tiny country of Balboa.  The Taurans are providing air cover and a blocking force in the neighboring country of Santa Josefina and  the Zhong providing the landing force attempting to take the Isla Real, the immense and heavily fortified island commanding the transitway. There are time references both backward looking and forward, starting with the Amazon Legion, continuing in the fifth novel Come and Take Them. I would highly recommend reading the whole series. It’s more than worth it.

Many of the characters from the previous novels are here with some added fleshing out particularly concerning the High Admiral Wallenstein and her latest relationship and some truly funny plot elements revolving around Carrera’s son Hamilcar and his domestic difficulties. Lesson there: you don’t really need twelve wives, lad.

There are new characters, of course, notably among the Zhong Imperial Marines and their bloody sacrifices on the beaches of Isla Real. The battle action starts about 45 percent into the book with an interesting taste of things to come in the Prologue, and continues until the book ends with a not-so-subtle cliff hanger pointing to Book 7. Personally, I can’t wait until the Legion takes on the UEPF, the United Earth Peace Fleet, in orbit around the planet and providing from orbit intelligence gathering for the Tauran forces.

I can’t give you metrics of prose competence, plot flow, etc. All I can do is tell you this a real page turner and a long awaited addition to the series. I loved it. Enjoy!

If you enjoy keeping up on the latest in SF/F, I would encourage you to begin following the Castalia House blog on a daily basis, where our SEVEN bloggers are now posting regular reviews of both conventional and independently published SF/F books. Mascaro has posted a review of AS I WALK THESE BROKEN ROADS by DMJ Aurini and Jeff’s review of SHADOW OF THE STORM by Martin J. Dougherty is a must-read for any TRAVELLER aficionado, as it sounds like Marc Miller has found himself a good writer who is respectful of the game canon.

And don’t miss Daniel’s intriguing take on the Tesla-Edison divide among science fiction writers.

A woman surprised

This review of QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted is unusual, since it is written by an avowed anti-fan, (and not merely an anti-fan of me), who, unlike some, elected to read the book and review it instead of merely reacting to the name of one of the authors:

I went into this book fully expecting to hate it. I was in fact
gleefully awaiting it to turn into a giant pile of shit that I could
tear apart with glee. One of the co-writers of this book was Vox “Throw
acid in women’s faces for the greater good” Day and the only endorsement
in the back of the book was Tom Kratman.

I was not prepared to give this book even a single chance, but by the
end I was furiously swiping through pages with pure glee. Its basically
the anti-Oathbound for me, a book I went in expecting to love and hated
it.

The plot in the general sense is your standard Noir in Space setup:
Investigator starts work on a simple case that turns out to be much
bigger than it looks and spirals into one that could decide the fate of
the entire planet and the main character is a grizzled hardass bigot.
What makes it work is that the characters are actually fantastic and
Steve Rzasa’s writing saves Vox Day’s and turns the book into an
utterly enjoyable piece of pulp fiction that’s so stupid it wraps around
to utterly fucking brilliant….

The book also subverts the hell out of a lot of the usual cliches as
well. The villain is actually a gigantic threat to the point that they
confront them with a Kill Team, a regiment of Marines and a Battleship in orbit
and Tower puts their odds of survival at “low”. AIs are also treated as
actual beings capable of independent thought, emotion and sacrifice and the book laughs off the idea of “Kill all Humans” or “God Complex” AIs.

The book also treats people who can kill with glee while making one liners as being total psychopaths
who freak the main character the fuck out while treating the guy puking
his guts out and crying while mowing enemies down as being far more
normal and perfectly respectable.

The first draft of the second QUANTUM MORTIS novel is now complete, so there is a good chance it will be out in July. Tower and Baby are back, and they find themselves facing a threat that is even more gigantic and intergalactically dangerous than the one posed in QM:AMD. But Tower has a new gun….

Religion is evil: the proof

The category of Best Fan Writer has been more than a little dubious since John Scalzi inaugurated the custom of a professional writer lobbying for the award. But it looks as if this year the nominees are actual fans from SF fandom, as opposed to novelists like Scalzi and Hines slumming it in order to score a trophy. And to think they accuse us of gaming the awards!

In any event, after a perusal of the five nominee’s sites, I found that Abigail Nussbaum of Asking the Wrong Questions is the best of the Best Fan Writer category. And while it can hardly compare to John C. Wright’s comprehensive demolition of the man’s work, this review of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is more than a little entertaining:

Book I

Pullman: Religion is Evil.

Readers: Why?

Pullman: Because priests kill babies.

Readers: No they don’t. You just made that up in the book.

Pullman: Shut up! Look at Iorek Byrnison!

Readers: Hey, he is cool. (Iorek does cool stuff for one book and then spends the next two books being completely boring, chasing after Lyra.)

Book II

Pullman: God is Evil.

Readers: Why?

Pullman: Because priests kill babies.

Readers:
No they don’t. Hey, how come you can’t seem to separate organized
religion and God? And how come the only organized religion in your
books is Catholicism?

Pullman: Shut up! Look at Will!

Readers: Hey, he is really cool. (Will does really cool stuff for one book and then spends the next book being completely boring, chasing after Lyra.)

Book III

Pullman: God, religion, and any person of faith are Evil.

Readers: Why?

Pullman: Sheesh, are you deaf? They kill babies!

Readers: Hang on, the leader of the fight against God also killed a baby. Why isn’t he evil?

Pullman: No he didn’t.

Readers: Yes he did, it’s right here in the first book.

Pullman: Shut up! Look at Will and Lyra having sex!

Readers: Urg. Isn’t Lyra ten?

Pullman: She’s twelve now.

Readers: Well, that makes it all better, then.

Lyra:
Even though I’ve never shown any interest in religion or the struggle
against God, and I’ve never really been taught anything about the
subject, I will now give a long stirring speech about establishing the
Republic of Heaven, just in case there are still readers who aren’t
brainwa… I mean convinced. (Book ends.)

Pullman: Remember, God is Evil.

Miss Nussbaum may not be terribly keen on me, but it’s hard to hold that against her when she produces amusing gems like this: “When we look back on this year, what we’ll remember is Vox Day.”

No doubt she is entirely correct.

A whiff of Hultgreen-Curie

At Alpha Game, it is observed that appears women in the military are closing the all-important suicide gap between male and female soldiers.

Meanwhile, at Castalia House, Anson contemplates the difference between “fluff” and “poorly done” in a review of John Ringo:

If a novel is poorly done, it doesn’t much matter what it attempts to do: it is a failure. (Although the topic of what makes a book either a success or a failure is a complicated one; that’s a topic I hope to dig into over time as these reviews continue).

Today, though, I want to speak about serious vs fluff. Lord of the Rings is serious. The Sword of Shana is fluff (it is also poorly done , but that’s not relevant). What makes LOTR serious while SOS (and, yes, someone please send help ASAP) is fluff? Intent, complexity, characterization, congruence between aim of the novel, tone of the language, originality of the world, nuance of the characters, depth of the moral code, etc.

And Daniel cites Philip K. Dick’s preferred method of future-scrying:

[B]ecause the mystical experience of writing to anticipate the future will most certainly be inaccurate, one is more likely to anticipate the future by looking to the past…and scrambling it.

Lion’s Den: Witchfinder 2

RW provides a second review of WITCHFINDER, by Sarah Hoyt:

3 parts Fantasy
2 parts Fairy Tale
1 splash of Science Fiction
1 dash of Mythology

Mix ingredients thoroughly with magic. Garnish with a slice of Romance.

Sarah A. Hoyt has ambitiously attempted to tie together fantasy, fairy tale, and a bit of romance; and for the most part she pulls it off brilliantly.  It is a difficult work to review without being a spoiler since part of the enjoyment of reading this book is watching how she develops the worlds in the multi-verse and how she incorporates many elements from well-known stories from fairy tales and mythology, with an occasional nod to religion, into a coherent whole.

CHARACTERS: Hoyt does an exceptional job bringing her characters to life.  She uses a formulaic approach to how most of them are developed throughout the story, where she describes them in three stages of growth.  The first stage is she portrays them as they seem to be to others or how they believe that they have to act.  The second stage occurs as they interact with each other and start to learn each other’s secrets and true selves.  For the final stage Hoyt shows the characters starting to understand what they really need to be in order to fulfill their destiny.  In lesser hands this template approach would seem two-dimensional, but Hoyt uses this approach to good effect aligning the character development within the scope of the overall story. (8/10)

PROSE: Hoyt’s prose is hard to describe; in some places it is fluid and conversational, but in other places it borders on being poetic.  Her ability to create word pictures aids in her development of new worlds as she masterfully describes exotic places, Fairyland in particular.  She mentioned in her write-up that the story was written as blog postings over many months, and there is a slow evolution in the use of punctuation and grammar as the story progresses.  Similarly, there were quite a few typos, but she has already claimed these too. (7/10)

PLOT: [Warning: this section contains a few spoilers, so if you plan on reading the book I suggest skipping down to the IDEAS paragraph.] The general structure holds nicely as she develops a modern-day fairy tale of a young lady coming to terms with the fact that she is a princess in another world.  Simultaneously Hoyt creates a concurrent plot about a family of world-jumping witches, closer to the fantasy genre.  The stories intertwine early, with heavy doses of mystery and suspense as the Duke of Darkwater realizes that he is being targeted; and all of the characters begin to question the motives of each other, even their closest family members.

However, there are a few items that weaken the story in my opinion.  The first is relatively minor: the character of the matriarch, the dowager duchess Ainsling, is very interesting and plays a large role in the early part of the story, but then she disappears for most of the second half, making a brief cameo at the end.   The second is that the novel’s climatic showdowns don’t quite live up to the promise of the escalation of the conflicts.  The third issue might be related to Hoyt’s stated goal that she was writing more of a romantic work to lure female fantasy readers. The issue I had is that there are discussions of cross-species relationships, necrophilia, child prostitution, and a heavy dose of homosexuality.  The cross-species relationships is understandable given that the book is somewhere between fantasy and fairytale, but the other items seemed somewhat forced.  My reason for bringing this up is that with the exception of these items, along with maybe two or three unnecessary expletives, I would have liked to pass the book along to my young adolescent daughter to read, as I’m sure she would enjoy the story.  If the author feels that the homosexual relationship is integral to the story, then I’d suggest that she continue to use vague references and hints, as she used earlier in the book where she was modeling it after Regency romances. (6/10)

IDEAS: I thought that the most creative aspect of Hoyt’s universe is that all of the worlds have their own versions of legends and fairytales based on actual happenings, mainly in either Avalon or Fairyland.  As with any fairytale, there are a couple of morals to conclude the story: lead when called upon, and be a servant-leader, not a tyrant. (5/10)

TOTAL: (6.5/10)  In truth I liked Witchfinder better than that score indicates, mainly because it equally weighs all four of the elements above.  This book is the first of Hoyt’s works that I have read, and I found it enjoyable enough that I expect that I’ll soon be reading other books from her.  Men concerned about the “romance” label need not be scared away since the love story is in the background through most of the book.  If Hoyt were to address the issues mentioned above, then I would give this book a high recommendation to young readers as well.

Lions Den: Witchfinder

The Bandit reviews Sarah Hoyt’s WITCHFINDER for the Lion’s Den. And speaking of book reviews, Toni Mascaro has activated the Castalia House blog with a review of The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell.

Like the title character, I didn’t quite realize what I had first stumbled into when I offered to review WITCHFINDER, written by Sarah A. Hoyt. The blurb gave me the impression of multiverse derring-do — sort of a magical fantasy version of Star Gate. Although I’ve enjoyed a rant or seven on her blog, I had yet to read any of Sarah Hoyt’s published writing, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to introduce myself to her work. It was only afterward that I learned two additional facts:  (1) it had been written to appeal to romance readers, and (2) the book originated as a semi-serious chapter-a-week project on the author’s blog.

Now, being a horridly privileged cismale, I am not sure I am qualified to judge a romance’s quality. The elements that I’ve come to associate with fantasy romance are definitely all there:  ongoing “tension” in the form of repeatedly noting attraction but ignoring it for the nonce, sexually aberrant secondary characters, wereseals (in effect), inter-species love, and a proliferation of the subsequent half-breed spawn. I cannot tell you how effectively these might have been wielded in order to turn on the intended audience, but I can say that, surprisingly, I wasn’t turned off. I suppose I should clarify that there’s no steamy sex scenes, nor is any of this treated in a way I’d be uncomfortable to allowing my own young adult to read it. (Caveat: there’s a lot of buggery afoot.)

Prose (4/10): Here the novel suffers because of its origin. Written as a weekly blog post, the standard of writing is about as one would expect for a blog post. Presumably written with a quick once-over before hitting “submit,” some sentences end up convoluted and confusing not for any imitation of the stilted regency style (the style itself is very modern in its simplicity) but for the need of some additional drafting. The effect of its origin also goes beyond the occasional typos and broken sentences that have slipped through to jar the reader:  the overall pacing and structure also stutters a bit. This means some chapters feel just a bit too rushed, and one or two were clearly a week in which the author didn’t have much time but had to get something up. A stronger edit could have really tightened this novel and make it run at a good clip, in my opinion. For all this, it is not all so bad to be very bothersome, and I might have given the prose a higher score if it were not for all the darn telling (as opposed to showing) that occurs, particularly when it came to the operation of magic and the abilities of the title character.

Plot (7/10): The plot is amazingly coherent for a story put together piecemeal over a couple of years. It has depth and goes in completely unforeseen directions without feeling disjointed. The predictable reveals set the reader up for the true twists and unexpected reveals further down the line. The reader clearly recognizes that the kingdom is at stake long before the characters catch up, but then the author surprises the reader with the actual purpose of the conspiracy. All loose ends then tie up rather nicely.

Characters (8/10): Unsurprisingly, according to its genre (as per our host’s explanation), the novel’s strongest element is its characters. One of the book’s reviewers on Amazon notes that the characters start as stereotypes of regency fiction and then flesh out into new directions, and I agree with that assessment. Hoyt’s talent really shines in the way that she allows the reader to get to know the characters slowly, presenting false impressions and misconceptions, and then turning them on their head to show the human underneath. In fact, it is the humanity of the characters that really impresses — they all have believable flaws and struggles — particularly since not all of them are completely human. I enjoyed watching Hoyt lift the veil on this or that character’s actions to reveal the understandable motivations beneath.

Ideas (6/10): Three ideas are at work here:  the multiverse, fairy tale magic, and duty. Hoyt ably uses the multiverse concept to suit her purposes, and she also takes the opportunity to make some historical reference jokes. The take on magic is a bit foggy; I personally prefer to understand the rules of magic within a given universe, but these are never clearly explained. A recurring motif in describing the working of magic is the manipulation of the threads that make the tapestry of reality. The ultimate result is that, instead of taking the fantastic and making it seem believable, Hoyt takes the believable (characters) and then dumps it into a tableau of the fantastic. I assume, given the fairy tale theme, that this was intentional; it ends up feeling very much like the magic in fairy tales. Finally, the theme of duty resonates throughout, and the way the author uses the theme to mold the character’s decisions struck me enough to bump up this category’s score. Instead of denigrating duty as just oppressive and foolish, the burden and sometimes-tragedy of duty is acknowledged while still emphasizing and respecting its importance. This treatment of duty has become rare enough that it’s slightly jarring in the same way that the novel’s reasonable and respectful treatment of the sexes and regency customs (in a romance!) also feels slightly odd, but refreshing.

Overall (6/10): I enjoyed reading WITCHFINDER, and might give it
to a female friend who likes regency or fantasy romance, but probably
would not buy it for myself.

Sample text: “Now, Duke,” Gabriel Penn said, very mildly, but in a tone of worried distraction. He made as though to take a step sideways to pull his companion [Marlon] out of the dirt, or perhaps to succor him, but Seraphim [the Duke] held him fast.

“No, don’t you go trying to cajole me. You know what coils this creature embroiled you in, and you know he can only bring you dishonor and grief. Even if he captured you by dishonorable means, you should know–”

Gabriel Penn’s eyes flashed with a look not unlike Seraphim’s own when animated with near-uncontrollable fury, and for a moment he showed his teeth, pressed close together. Nell thought he was about to slug the Duke, and for just a second, without thinking, moved to step between them. Then she checked herself. Even on Earth, stepping between two men about to engage in a slugging match was perfectly stupid. But, stepping between two men from Britannia about to engage in a slugging match might be crazier. Not only would they slug it out around or over her, but they would also hold each other responsible for causing her to step in. Their rules of chivalry were complicated, but that one was obvious.

As she paused, Gabriel reached out and got hold of both of the duke’s arms above the elbow, “Your Grace, you bonehead, listen to me: Marlon Elfborn did not capture me. I went to him to ask for help when I had nowhere else to go.”

“Well,” Seraphim said, struggling to pull his arms away from his brother’s gripping fingers. “that only proves you’re not competent to run your own affairs. Furthermore–”

“Yes, I know, furthermore, he interrupted my education, raised the dead and deflowered the family goat. Give over Seraphim, you fool, do. Stop your vendetta and listen to me.”

“He deflowered what?” Seraphim said, stopping mid-shout and frowning.

A dark-red blush climbed Gabriel’s cheeks. His eyes darted at Nell, and he actually attempted to bow, which went to show that the training of Britannia men was quite past rationality or sanity even. “I beg your pardon Miss Felix…”

Raising Steam and the devolution of Pratchett

At his best, Terry Pratchett was much better than he was ever given credit for. His characters were deeply human, his social commentary could border on the brilliant, and if the humor occasionally fell flat at times, well, that was forgivable. That being said, for the sake of his own reputation, he probably should have ended the Discworld series with Making Money.

Raising Steam, the 40th in the Discworld series, isn’t just a predictable spin on the same “new technology comes to Ankh-Morpork” that Pratchett has been increasingly relying upon since Pyramids, it’s Message Fiction. Even worse, it’s Multicultural Message Fiction, which reveals an author woefully out of touch with the nationalist zeitgeist now sweeping Europe.

It’s all very NuLabor and Kumbaya and Surely We Can All Be Friends, which looks hopelessly outdated in George Zimmerman’s America, Lee Rigby’s Britain, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. And the speechifying, O sweet Rincewind, the speechifying!

His voice low, Rhys spoke. ‘For what purpose am I King? I will tell you. In a world where we formally recognize trolls, humans and, these days, all manner of species, even goblins, unreconstructed elements of dwarfdom persist in their campaign to keep the grags auditing all that is dwarfish.’
He looked sternly at Ardent as he continued, ‘Dwarfs from every area where dwarfs live in sufficient numbers have tried to modernize, but to no avail apart from those in Ankh-Morpork, and the shame of it is that often those determined to keep dwarfkind in the darkness have somehow inculcated their flocks into believing that change of any sort is a blasphemy, no specific blasphemy, just a blasphemy all by itself, spinning through the cosmos as sour as an ocean of vinegar. This cannot be!’
His voice rose and his fist crashed down on the table. ‘I am here to tell you, my friends and, indeed, my smiling enemies, that if we do not band together against the forces that wish to keep us in darkness dwarfkind will be diminished. We need to work together, talk to one another, deal properly with one another and not spend all our time in one enormous grump that the world isn’t entirely ours any more and, at the finish, ruin it for everyone. After all, who would deal with such as us in a world of new choices? In truth, we should act as sapient creatures should! If we don’t move with the future, the future will twist and roll right over us.’
Rhys paused to accommodate the inevitable outburst of Shame! and Not so! and all the other detritus of rotted debate, and then spoke again. ‘Yes, I recognize you, Albrecht Albrechtson. The floor is yours.’
The elderly dwarf, who had once been favourite to win the last election for Low King, said courteously, ‘Your majesty, you know I have no particular liking for the way that the world is going, nor some of your more modern ideas, but I have been shocked to discover that some of the more headstrong grags are still orchestrating attacks on the clacks system.’
The King said, ‘Are they mad?! We made it clear to this council and all dwarfs, after the message we received from Ankh-Morpork about their clacks being attacked, that this stupidity must cease at once. It’s even worse than the Nugganites, who were, to be sensible about this, totally and absolutely bloody insane.’
Albrecht coughed and said, ‘Your majesty, in this instance I find myself standing shoulder to shoulder with you. I am appalled to see things go this far. What are we but creatures of communication and communication accurately communicated is a benison to be cherished by all species everywhere. I never thought I would say this, but the news I am hearing lately, and am expected to delight in, makes me ashamed to call myself a dwarf. We have our differences and it’s right and proper that we should have them, and discourse and compromise are cornerstones in the proper world of politics, but here and now, your majesty, you have my full and unequivocal support. And as for those who stand in our way, I call down a murrain on them. I say, a murrain!’
There are uproars and there are uproars and this uproar stayed up for a very long time.
Eventually Albrecht Albrechtson brought his axe down on to the table, splitting the wood from top to bottom, bringing terrified silence across the gathered dwarfs, and said, ‘I support my King. That is what a King is for. A murrain, I said. A murrain. And a Ginnungagap for those that say different.’

Then, three pages later, Lord Vetinari contemplates those irritating little unthinking people who stand in the way of Progress.

Curious, the Patrician thought, as Drumknott hurried away to dispatch a clacks to the editor of the Times, that people in Ankh-Morpork professed not to like change while at the same time fixating on every new entertainment and diversion that came their way. There was nothing the mob liked better than novelty. Lord Vetinari sighed again. Did they actually think? These days everybody used the clacks, even little old ladies who used it to send him clacks messages complaining about all these new-fangled ideas, totally missing the irony….
There was nothing for it but to follow the wave. New things, new ideas arrived and strutted their stuff and were vilified by some and then lo! that which had been a monster was suddenly totally important to the world. All the time the fanglers and artificers were coming up with even more useful things that hadn’t been foreseen and suddenly became essential. And the pillars of the world remained unshaken.

Pratchett completely fails to see the irony in his presentation of a King and a Dictator as the voices of Inevitable Progress. This scene gives way, on literally the next page, to a dwarf waxing eloquent on how wonderful it is that dwarves and trolls are friends now, and twenty pages later, is followed by a FOURTH repetition of THE SAME VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE.

Bleddyn had cooked a good rat supper and was upset when she saw his face and said, ‘Those damn grags again! Why don’t you tell them to put their nonsense where the light shines too much!’fn26
Bleddyn didn’t usually swear, so that surprised him, and she continued, ‘They had a point once. They said that we were being swallowed up by the humans and the trolls, and you know it’s true, except that it’s the wrong kind of truth. The kids’ve got human friends and one or two trolls as well and nobody notices, nobody thinks about it. Everyone is just people.’
He looked at her face and said, ‘But we’re diminished, less important!’
But Bleddyn was emphatic and said, ‘You silly old dwarf. Don’t you think the trolls consider themselves diminished too? People mingle and mingling is good! You’re a dwarf, with big dwarf hobnail boots and everything else it takes to be a dwarf. And remember, it wasn’t so long ago that dwarfs were very scarce outside of Uberwald. You must know your history? Nobody can take that away, and who knows, maybe some trolls are saying right now, “Oh dear, my little pebbles is being influenced by the dwarfs! It’s a sin!” The Turtle moves for everybody all the time, and those grags schism so often that they consider everyone is a schism out there on their own. Look it up. I’ve cooked you a lovely rat – nice and tender – so why not eat it up and get out into the sunshine? I know it isn’t dwarfish, but it’s good for getting your clothes dried.’
When he laughed she smiled and said, ‘All that’s wrong in the world is that it’s spilling over us as if we’re stones in a stream, and it’ll leave us eventually. Remember your old granddad telling you about going to fight the trolls in Koom Valley, yes? And then you told your son how you went back to Koom Valley and found out the whole damn business was a misunderstanding. And because of all this, our Brynmor won’t even have to fight unless someone is extremely stupid. Say no to the grags. Really, they’re bogeymen. I’ve spoken to all the women round here and they say exactly the same thing. 

It’s one tedious lecture after another and the sheer idiocy of the message is remarkable. The idea that war is based on misunderstanding, that people are all the same underneath, and that multiculturalism and multiethnic societies means our children won’t have to fight is not only wrong, it is downright backward. It is this very thinking that has guaranteed that the wars of the next generation will be more vicious, more bitter, and more terrible, on a larger scale, than anything Europe has seen since the Thirty Years War.

The nations did not come to exist in a vaccuum. Nations are born from two things, geographic isolation and the hellish cauldron of inter-group exile and extermination. Just as Hutus and Tutsis didn’t care that they were both called “Rwandans” when they murdered each other, no one is going to care that they are “British” or “French” or “American” when the debt-inflated pseudo-wealth is gone and the struggle for real resources begins.

Raising Steam isn’t a capstone on a distinguished career, it is a badly written caricature that is a tombstone for a dying idea.

Reading List 2013

Of the 81 books I read this year, the one I enjoyed most was Jill Paton Walsh’s remarkably good revival of Dorothy Sayers’s famous characters in A Presumption of Death, followed by Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile. The
worst book I read this year was, without question, Isaac Asimov’s Forward the Foundation,
which is one of those ill-considered prequels that makes one wonder how the author ever managed to write the books that inspired them in the first place. I couldn’t even bring myself to start the third book in the trilogy, which was so dreadful that it almost caused me to reconsider the merits of the original Foundation trilogy. The
most disappointing book was Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery. It wasn’t bad or poorly written, (in fact, it was remarkably well-researched), but it was unpleasant, the protagonist was a cipher, the literary device employed was both irritating and unnecessary, and there was little point to the plot itself other than to provide a creative explanation for the authorship of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

On the non-fiction side, I read a number of truly excellent books this year. Rothbard’s An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Vol I is an epic must-read for anyone with any interest in economics, (I’m halfway through Volume II now), and Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile articulated some very important concepts towards which I’d been fumbling over the last ten years. I finally got around to actually reading Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in its entirety, and re-reading Mere Christianity was, as always, both thought-provoking and encouraging. However, PJ O’Rourke’s Don’t Vote It Just Encourages The Bastards read as if it had been phoned in; either O’Rourke has lost his fastball or his effervescent conservativism was fatally discouraged by the Bush ’43 administration.

Keep in mind these ratings are not necessarily statements about a book’s
significance or literary quality, they are merely casual observations of how much I
happened to enjoy reading the book at the time. 

FIVE STARS
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Vol I, Murray Rothbard
Panzer Commander, Hans von Luck
My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok 
A Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh
Antifragile, Nassim Taleb
Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn
Dune, Frank Herbert
Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
Inherit the Stars, James Hogan
1Q84, Haruki Murakami

FOUR STARS
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
Il Cavaliere Inesistante, Italo Calvino
Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
King Rat, China Mieville
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
Officers and Gentlemen, Evelyn Waugh 
Red Country, Joe Abercrombie
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, PG Wodehouse
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
Five Red Herrings, Dorothy Sayers
Clouds of Witness, Dorothy Sayers
Spellbound, Larry Correia 
Warbound, Larry Correia
Monster Hunter International, Larry Correia
Defense of the Divine Revelation against the Objections of the Freethinkers, Leonhard Euler
The Art of Game Design, Jesse Schell
The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, James Hogan
Giant’s Star, James Hogan
In Search of Stupidity, Rick Chapman

THREE STARS
The Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises 
Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams
The Meaning of It All, Richard Feynman 
Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh 
Sharpe’s Battle, Bernard Cornwell 
Sharpe’s Company, Bernard Cornwell 
Sharpe’s Sword, Bernard Cornwell
The Desert Spear, Peter Brett 
Macroscope, Piers Anthony
Greenwitch, Susan Cooper
Down on the Farm, Charles Stross
Terms of Enlistment, Marko Kloos
Men on Strike, Helen Smith  
Looking for Jake, China Mieville
Hailstone Mountain, Lars Walker 
Tales of the Dying Earth, Jack Vance
The Jewels of Paradise, Donna Leon 
Lord Talon’s Revenge, Tom Simon
Jhereg, Stephen Brust 
Yendi, Stephen Brust 
Teckla, Stephen Brust 
Taltos, Stephen Brust
Hard Magic, Larry Correia
Monster Hunter Vendetta, Larry Correia 
Monster Hunter Alpha, Larry Correia 
Tour of Duty, Michael Z. Williamson 
The Gap into Conflict, Stephen Donaldson 
Lights in the Deep, Brad Torgersen 
The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks 
Busman’s Honeymoon, Dorothy Sayers 
A Desert Called Peace, Tom Kratman 
The Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco 
Big Boys Don’t Cry, Tom Kratman
Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert 
Frostborn: The First Quest, Jonathan Moeller
On Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

TWO STARS
 Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
The Daylight War, Peter Brett
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Imperialism & Social Classes, Joseph Schumpeter
Phoenix, Stephen Brust 
Athyra, Stephen Brust 
Songs of the Dying Earth, Dozois and Martin, ed.
The Gap into Vision, Stephen Donaldson 
The Gap into Power, Stephen Donaldson
The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky

ONE STAR
Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov
Forward the Foundation, Isaac Asimov
Tactics, Asclepiodotus
Don’t Vote It Just Encourages The Bastards, PJ O’Rourke

Swirskyella: a review

Dave Truesdale reviews Apex Magazine and is absolutely appalled by the sight of a feminist authoress releasing her rancid, overstuffed bowels all over a classic fairytale:

Rachel Swirsky’s “All That Fairy Tale Crap” gives us another female author who is, let’s say…severely disgruntled at stuff she cannot change in the real world. Her focus here is the “ideal” female as portrayed in fairy tales who make it impossible for the contemporary woman to live up to such high standards—the fairy tale of Cinderella being the chosen target here and which seems to be the one getting the author’s panties in a twist.

Rather than acknowledging that such models of purity and innocence as Cinderella might be something toward which to aspire, or look up to as an ideal, the author has decided to destroy that which she cannot attain in real life. Envy? Jealousy? A desperate, angry attempt to knock from her pedestal a fairy tale princess realizing such is not to be in her own life? Just another writing assignment for an anthology to make a buck or two and let’s take a contrary viewpoint and run with it? Anyone’s guess. But the lashing out at the seeming unattainable, to make mockery of the ideal, to bring down to one’s own level rather than striving to raise one’s own station is something the immature adolescent is prone to do, not the mature adult….

 Sadly, there are those who lash out and can think only low thoughts of mockery or destruction, the cutting down to size those who profess or portray what we might be, or become, because they have, in one way or another, given up on themselves and wish to destroy that which gives others inspiration or hope. Tis a pity their glass of Life is always half empty and at every opportunity they feel an unrepentant urge to share their from-the-heart (“There! Take that!”), disappointment-with-life vision with those who strive to set their sights higher.

“All That Fairy Tale Crap” is a fine example of this view and is more likely to find its target audience among an uncritical, morally ambivalent adolescent crowd (if not adolescent by age, then by psychological maturity). In this respect I give it a Well done. Stories like this, in the final analysis, reveal to the careful reader more about the author than anything worthwhile to be revealed or added to the canon of the fairy tale itself.

This is a perfect illustration of everything that is wrong and evil and degraded about SF/F today. Then realize that the authoress is the Scalziette who was elected to the SFWA Board by the pinkshirts earlier this year. Rachel Swirsky happens to be the vice-president of the SFWA.

Perhaps Swirsky believes she is “subverting” Cinderella. If so, that would only serve to demonstrate the lack of talent in modern SF/F. This is how you subvert Cinderella if you have genuine literary talent. Swirsky has less story-telling ability than the average porn director shooting four films in an LA mini-mansion rented for the day.

There is no getting around it. The SFWA is run by a group of fat and freakish losers who write mediocre fiction about soldiers swapping blow jobs and Cinderella going down on her stepsisters. If you didn’t believe me before when I said I didn’t mind being kicked out of the organization after my failed attempt to salvage it, perhaps you will now.

UPDATE: I am informed that when she’s not writing poisonous crap, Swirskyella enjoys sock-puppeting her own Wikipedia page. As my emailer noted, these people are charlatans down to the bone.