Book reviews
Oct. 11th, 2006 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyEver notice that I review art shows on my blog to bash them, and I review books to rave about them? I wonder why that is.
Today's theme is genre-bending and political speculative fiction.
The Scar, China Miéville
I picked this book up at Word on the Street because it was $6 and because I'd been meaning to read Miéville since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wouldprefernot2 recommended him. All I knew about the author was that his books were considered steampunk and that he is a bit of a lefty. The Scar is his third book and part of the Bas-Lag series, but it's a standalone, and the books don't need to be read in order.
So yes, it's political, and it's steampunk, but I'm convinced that Miéville's main goal in writing this book was to see how much awesome he could cram in one novel.
That sounds snarky, but I don't mean it to be. It's 578 pages, and it could be much shorter if Miéville wasn't so enthralled with describing all of the cool shit he's thought up. This would ordinarily annoy me, but what he's thought up is so utterly cool that I actually do want to hear about every rivet on every scavenged ship.
Very briefly: A ship carrying mostly convicts, whose bodies have been transformed into grotesque hybrids and who are to be sold into slavery, is on its way to a colony when it's waylaid by pirates. Being pirates, they capture the ship, kill the captain, and take everyone else to their floating pirate city, without ever once saying, "Arrr!" This isn't terribly good for a few of the passengers, including Bellis, the viewpoint character, but it's a great stroke of luck for the convicts, who are accepted into the city as equal citizens. The pirate city, however, is not exactly a utopia—its rather twisted rulers have a plan for it, and while it might seem to be floating aimlessly, they have a definite direction in mind.
The book itself is a hybrid, blurring the lines between sci-fi and fantasy, but it is most of all a tall sea tale—the story of a journey through uncharted waters in search of the edge of the world. It's Voyage of the Dawn Treader for grown-up atheists. Instead of dragons and mermaids, Miéville writes about creatures with human torsos and crayfish bodies, mosquito people, and sentient cactii.
Obsessed as he is with worldbuilding, he doesn't neglect plot—the story works like a mousetrap contraption, building intricacies and playing the characters despite their own schemes—and then justifies its various Byzantine twists and turns. He's a very self-aware writer, and when he pulls out a cliché, he's usually doing it to screw with your expectations. (There's a vampire, but he's neither brooding nor homicidal. He's a politician and a bureaucrat with a particularly morbid, albeit consensual, form of taxation.)
A brief scan of the Amazon reviews suggest that everyone else had the same problem with Bellis as I did. She's a thoroughly unlikeable character. I don't mean that she's a flawed character, or an anti-hero. She's selfish, spoiled, and outside of the field of linguistics, not particularly bright. I'm going to reluctantly give Miéville points for this, too, because the story would otherwise be too easy—he's very much in love with the city, so he shows it from the viewpoint of someone who isn't. But more important, the unlikeable characters (which is to say, all of them except for Tanner) serve to ground the otherwise fantastic story in reality. You don't like Bellis, but she does the sort of thing that you'd do in her particular set of circumstances. She's also an unreliable narrator, mostly because she's not half as good a judge of character as she thinks she is, so when someone betrays her, the reader is genuinely shocked along with her.
n+1 has some interesting thoughts about how Miéville's books fit into the fantasy genre. The sorts of books that Howard talks about aren't of particular interest to me (and Ursula K. LeGuin blasts them here). Miéville doesn't deal in absolutes. There's no villain, but plenty of villainous deeds; no utopia, but plenty of visions.
But really, you should read it because the climax answers the question of who would win in a fight—vampires or pirates. (Don't worry; I won't give it away.)
Farthing, Jo Walton
I've mentioned this one in passing a few times; I attended the launch party in Montréal a few weeks ago. Farthing, by Jo's account, was written in 17 "white hot furious" days.
I'll defer to Jo's description: It's a cozy mystery, with Nazis. Yes, it's one of those alternate WWII histories; one in which the Hess mission was a success. The Nazis are still fighting the Soviets in 1949, but they've stopped at the Channel, leaving the Tory faction responsible for the truce in control of England. Said faction is gathered in a country estate when the main negotiator is murdered. It becomes clear that the Jewish husband of the host's daughter is being framed for the murder, and that the mystery is related to larger political developments.
At the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
farthingparty, someone brought up that the whole point of a cozy mystery is that a safe, familiar space is violated, and the detective must work to restore the social order. Farthing subverts the genre; the mystery is obvious, but the underlying social order is corrupt. At its heart, it's a story about the politics of fear. Now doesn't that sound familiar?
It's a short book, but it's crammed with issues, and not in an obnoxious or gratuitous way—the various oppressions intersect. It isn't, as some people have suggested, so much a book with a disproportionate amount of queer characters, but rather a book that explores who is allowed to be queer through the prism of class, and so on.
Beyond that, it's beautifully written, playing comfort and humour (there's a lot of tea) against a grim, noir inevitability. It's been awhile since I've read a book that I felt could only end one way but found myself genuinely upset over the outcome.
As I wrap up this review, I'm also reading about the survey out of John Hopkins that places the Iraqi death toll at 655,000 since the beginning of the most recent U.S. invasion in 2003. I'm wondering why there's not more outrage, present company excluded. And I'm thinking about Farthing, which you all should read, because it tackles the question of what it means to be a Good German, and doesn't shy away from the answers.
Today's theme is genre-bending and political speculative fiction.
The Scar, China Miéville
I picked this book up at Word on the Street because it was $6 and because I'd been meaning to read Miéville since
wouldprefernot2 recommended him. All I knew about the author was that his books were considered steampunk and that he is a bit of a lefty. The Scar is his third book and part of the Bas-Lag series, but it's a standalone, and the books don't need to be read in order.So yes, it's political, and it's steampunk, but I'm convinced that Miéville's main goal in writing this book was to see how much awesome he could cram in one novel.
That sounds snarky, but I don't mean it to be. It's 578 pages, and it could be much shorter if Miéville wasn't so enthralled with describing all of the cool shit he's thought up. This would ordinarily annoy me, but what he's thought up is so utterly cool that I actually do want to hear about every rivet on every scavenged ship.
Very briefly: A ship carrying mostly convicts, whose bodies have been transformed into grotesque hybrids and who are to be sold into slavery, is on its way to a colony when it's waylaid by pirates. Being pirates, they capture the ship, kill the captain, and take everyone else to their floating pirate city, without ever once saying, "Arrr!" This isn't terribly good for a few of the passengers, including Bellis, the viewpoint character, but it's a great stroke of luck for the convicts, who are accepted into the city as equal citizens. The pirate city, however, is not exactly a utopia—its rather twisted rulers have a plan for it, and while it might seem to be floating aimlessly, they have a definite direction in mind.
The book itself is a hybrid, blurring the lines between sci-fi and fantasy, but it is most of all a tall sea tale—the story of a journey through uncharted waters in search of the edge of the world. It's Voyage of the Dawn Treader for grown-up atheists. Instead of dragons and mermaids, Miéville writes about creatures with human torsos and crayfish bodies, mosquito people, and sentient cactii.
Obsessed as he is with worldbuilding, he doesn't neglect plot—the story works like a mousetrap contraption, building intricacies and playing the characters despite their own schemes—and then justifies its various Byzantine twists and turns. He's a very self-aware writer, and when he pulls out a cliché, he's usually doing it to screw with your expectations. (There's a vampire, but he's neither brooding nor homicidal. He's a politician and a bureaucrat with a particularly morbid, albeit consensual, form of taxation.)
A brief scan of the Amazon reviews suggest that everyone else had the same problem with Bellis as I did. She's a thoroughly unlikeable character. I don't mean that she's a flawed character, or an anti-hero. She's selfish, spoiled, and outside of the field of linguistics, not particularly bright. I'm going to reluctantly give Miéville points for this, too, because the story would otherwise be too easy—he's very much in love with the city, so he shows it from the viewpoint of someone who isn't. But more important, the unlikeable characters (which is to say, all of them except for Tanner) serve to ground the otherwise fantastic story in reality. You don't like Bellis, but she does the sort of thing that you'd do in her particular set of circumstances. She's also an unreliable narrator, mostly because she's not half as good a judge of character as she thinks she is, so when someone betrays her, the reader is genuinely shocked along with her.
n+1 has some interesting thoughts about how Miéville's books fit into the fantasy genre. The sorts of books that Howard talks about aren't of particular interest to me (and Ursula K. LeGuin blasts them here). Miéville doesn't deal in absolutes. There's no villain, but plenty of villainous deeds; no utopia, but plenty of visions.
But really, you should read it because the climax answers the question of who would win in a fight—vampires or pirates. (Don't worry; I won't give it away.)
Farthing, Jo Walton
I've mentioned this one in passing a few times; I attended the launch party in Montréal a few weeks ago. Farthing, by Jo's account, was written in 17 "white hot furious" days.
I'll defer to Jo's description: It's a cozy mystery, with Nazis. Yes, it's one of those alternate WWII histories; one in which the Hess mission was a success. The Nazis are still fighting the Soviets in 1949, but they've stopped at the Channel, leaving the Tory faction responsible for the truce in control of England. Said faction is gathered in a country estate when the main negotiator is murdered. It becomes clear that the Jewish husband of the host's daughter is being framed for the murder, and that the mystery is related to larger political developments.
At the
farthingparty, someone brought up that the whole point of a cozy mystery is that a safe, familiar space is violated, and the detective must work to restore the social order. Farthing subverts the genre; the mystery is obvious, but the underlying social order is corrupt. At its heart, it's a story about the politics of fear. Now doesn't that sound familiar?It's a short book, but it's crammed with issues, and not in an obnoxious or gratuitous way—the various oppressions intersect. It isn't, as some people have suggested, so much a book with a disproportionate amount of queer characters, but rather a book that explores who is allowed to be queer through the prism of class, and so on.
Beyond that, it's beautifully written, playing comfort and humour (there's a lot of tea) against a grim, noir inevitability. It's been awhile since I've read a book that I felt could only end one way but found myself genuinely upset over the outcome.
As I wrap up this review, I'm also reading about the survey out of John Hopkins that places the Iraqi death toll at 655,000 since the beginning of the most recent U.S. invasion in 2003. I'm wondering why there's not more outrage, present company excluded. And I'm thinking about Farthing, which you all should read, because it tackles the question of what it means to be a Good German, and doesn't shy away from the answers.
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Date: 2006-10-11 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-12 02:29 pm (UTC)* Must replace library card mutter, stupid person who stole my wallet has mine, mutter.
What's this on the floor?
Date: 2006-10-12 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 07:02 pm (UTC)I may read the SW more often if his articles are anything like his fiction.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 08:07 pm (UTC)Short answer: They aren't.
Longer answer: The SWP/ISO/IS all have a condescendingly low opinion of the reading abilities of politically-minded workers, and put every article through a heavy-handed editing process to make sure that they all have the same singsongy, cheerleading, 4th-grade-reading-level voice.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 08:19 pm (UTC)I should add that, while I was well aware of Miéville's politics, I didn't find him condescending, moralistic, or earnest—all things that turn me off in fiction. I had the sense that he was writing from a similar worldview as the one from which I was reading, but never that he was using his books to preach. I don't care how good someone's politics are; if a book's primary purpose is to deliver a Very Important Message About How the Author Thinks the World Should Be and there's no regard for craft, I'm going to get annoyed (I'm looking at you, Starhawk).
Anyway, he does such entertaining things with language. It's a shame to edit that out.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-12 01:48 pm (UTC)Well, the good thing is that the SWP at least has the resources to support two other publications: a monthly magazine, Socialist Review, and a quarterly journal, International Socialism. The editors of those appear to take a lighter touch with their writers, allowing far more personality and wit to come through than in SW. (Their politics still suck, but that's a given.) Miéville does sometimes write for each.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 08:21 pm (UTC)I've got an agenda in reviewing these two books, in that I want more people with whom to discuss them.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 08:49 pm (UTC)Nevertheless, I should get off my lazy butt and review more, darnit. The critical thinking employed in writing a well-considered review is something I enjoy, and I shouldn't depend on others for that pleasure.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 10:40 pm (UTC)i also really liked 'king rat' and all of his short fiction, but haven't picked up 'the iron council' yet.
i ratehr saw 'perdido...' (and t'the scar' only slightly less so) as this bizarre conglomeration of commie propaganda, great fantasy writing, and dungeons and dragons game gone horribly right.
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Date: 2006-10-11 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-11 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-12 11:26 pm (UTC)You should come review the St. James Art Fair, here in Louisville, some year. It was just last weekend. I live just within its borders, so I can't avoid it. There's some nice stuff here, but it its often lost in an ocean of tacky kitsch - and yuppie Republicans everywhere. In reaction, the local punk/alternative bar around the corner holds "The Un-Fair" with art to shock and "épater le bourgeois." My favorite items were these nice stoneware plates with the Death Star on them and the Haliburton logo below. They looked quite professional.
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Date: 2006-10-12 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-13 02:02 pm (UTC)