The Dervish House

I have to admit I approached Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House with a bit of trepidation. Firstly it was identified as SF and SF and I have never played together well, secondly everything I had heard about the book seemed to indicate that it had been nominated for the Hugo in an effort to give the award a bit of cred as something that could be won by serious literary works.

It’s hard to accurately classify The Dervish House. The SF seems to be the smallest part of it really. It’s only classified that way by virtue of it being set in 2027 and containing some nanotech. It’s part SF, part political thriller, part boys own adventure, part caper novel, there’s some historical fiction and even a love story.

The story covers the lives of 6 individuals over the course of week. Initially the 6 main characters are connected because they all live in Adem Dede Square, which has one of Istanbul’s few remaining dervish houses in it. Their lives will intersect during this week in ways that none of them could have envisaged at the beginning of it.

Like McDonald’s recent works The Dervish House is set in an exotic, developing country; this time Turkey’s ancient bustling capital of Istanbul. Ian McDonald writes lovingly about the city and seems to have captured it’s spirit and that of it’s residents. The city itself becomes in effect a 7th main character.

The 6 principals, through whose eyes readers see the story in short point of view chapters are Georgios Ferentinou; a retired Greek economist who pines for a lost love and wishes that his life had turned out differently. Can; a nine year old boy with a heart problem, who interacts with the world outside the square and his special school, mainly via the use of his remarkable bitbot, a nanotech toy. Adnan; an aggressive trader who is trying to pull off the biggest deal of his career. Ayse; Adnan’s wife, a dealer in religious antiquities who is on the trail of a mythical artefact called The Mellified Man. Leyla; a young lady from the country, who is trying to forge a career away from her tomato farming community as a marketing manager. Finally there is Necdet, a tortured former drug addict who goes from battling the demons of his past, to seeing the real thing on a regular basis.

The book is really a bit of a slow burn and takes far too long introducing it’s main characters and setting up their stories. It was a little frustrating at times trying to work out where and how they connected and why I should care. Once this is done, and everything is set in place ,the last 100 or so pages are a real thrill ride and it’s hard not to be taken in by it all and I genuinely connected with the characters, except maybe for Necdet, who I honestly could have done with a lot less of. I felt Leyla got hard done by in this respect, readers seemed to get less of her than the others and along with boy detective Can, she was probably one of the most accessible of the sextet.

Although McDonald could have done with a ruthless editor to trim some of the fat and the occasional unnecessary indulgence The Dervish House is a good read. It was unfortunate that it took so long to make me care about the characters and to set everything up. It’s all self contained and ends neatly, no overblown series in the brewing here. I don’t know that I could rate it as the best of any given year, but it’s well worth considering as entertainment done with style.

McVillain: The Man Who Got Away

David McMillan is one of those rare individuals whose life story sounds so unbelievable that it can’t possibly be true. I first heard of him when he was the subject of one of Channels 9’s successful ‘true’ crime stories; Underbelly. McMillan’s story was called The Man Who Got Away. After seeing the show and reading up a little bit about the man I realised that I had been aware of a number of episodes in his life, they were usually the headlines in newspapers.

McVillain: The Man Who Got Away covers David McMillan’s life from his birth in 1956 up until his imprisonment for drug smuggling in 1982. It could be argued that his life after that is even more bizarre. He remains the only Westerner to have ever successfully escaped from Bangkok’s notorious Klong Prem prison (also known as the ‘Bangkok Hilton’) and then he had some incredible adventures in the sub continent. He later wrote about his escape from Klong Prem in the book ‘Escape’.

McVillain: The Man Who Got Away details his earlier escapades and explains why a bright and charismatic young man raised in Melbourne’s suburbs became a notorious drug runner. David McMillan was intelligent, precocious and charming. He wanted wealth and all the trappings of it, but did not want to work for it. It’s not surprising that he got involved with the world of international drug smuggling. By the time he was in his early twenties he had already made and lost a number of fortunes. The book covers the schemes, the near misses, the successes and the people that David met along the way.

It was a light and entertaining read. I like reading about people whose lives are stranger than fiction and I also enjoy capers. David McMillan is on the money for both of those. He apparently plans a series of books about his extraordinary life and this is the first, that’s good news, because it left me wanting to know more. If I were McMillan I’d hire a ghost writer for the next one (the names Adam Shand, Andrew Rule and John Silvester immediately spring to mind) as while the smuggler is competent enough, he loses focus at times and the scenes don’t leap off the page the way they should. He also failed to adequately explain his relationship with the love of his life Clelia Vigano (who tragically died in a fire in Fairlea Women’s prison in 1982) so that the reader never really gets how close the two were or why he was so desperately in love with her.

David McMillan is almost like Australia’s answer to Henri ‘Papillon’ Charriere. The book has a few flaws, but is well worth the price and time well spent.

Cryoburn

Lois McMaster Bujold and her Miles Vorkosigan saga series seems to be a bit of a favourite amongst Hugo voters. 3 of the books have won the rocketship (1991, 1992 and 1995) and including 2010’s Cryoburn (nominated for the 2011 award) a further 4 have been nominated.

Cryoburn is the 15th full length novel in the series. It was not my first experience of the physically impaired galactic investigator. I read the first book in the series to see what all the fuss was about. While I didn’t hate it, it didn’t strike me as particularly memorable, nor did it inspire me to read any more of the series. So why did I pick up Cryoburn? I want to make an informed decision on the Hugo’s this year and the best way to do that is to read all the nominated works of which Cryoburn happens to be one.

It was an enjoyable enough SF outing, for all that it has the flavour of a detective novel that just happens to be set in a mildly futuristic setting. I’m still none the wiser as to why Miles has such a large and devoted following. There’s nothing particularly new or different about him or the world in which he operates. The world this particular one was set on had a Japanese flavour, but could have easily been set in a Japan some years from now. Despite his impairment, which seems to revolve around the fact that he’s quite small, Miles is a remarkably bland character to have become so popular. His youthful assistants in Cryoburn, pre teen runaways; the animal loving Jin and little sister Mina, were far more entertaining and amusing. They were also better drawn characters. The writing is merely competent without being outstanding.

What Bujold did do well was allow the reader to come in 15 books into the saga and not feel like they were lost. There were some references to the world and characters that were unfamiliar, but they were easy enough to pick up. The ending was obviously written for the long time fans and their reaction is likely to be more extreme than mine. Having read the earlier books in the series would probably add context and readers of long running series like to encounter old favourites, which the peripheral characters of Miles’ bodyguard Roic, his brother Mike and others obviously were. As I said they didn’t do a lot for me and I would have preferred to read a book about Jin and Mina, I felt they made better protagonists.

Not having a frame of reference to judge by I can’t tell if this is a superior entry in the series or just a continuation of a familiar and well loved theme. I suspect it is the latter. If you’ve liked other Vorkosigan novels this probably won’t disappoint and if you’re not a fan, but want something light and diverting with an SF slant then you could do worse.

Deadline

Firstly, I apologize to anyone who checks this blog every so often. I haven't updated in over a month because I've had some internet issues and my reading schedule (yes, I'm anal enough that I do have one, not that I stick to it) has worked so that I haven't been able to do anything for review just at the moment. Until Deadline, that is.

If you haven't read the first volume of Mira Grant's (pen name of Urban Fantasy author and John W. Campbell award winner Seanan McGuire) Newsflesh trilogy (Feed) be warned that there are spoilers for that here. You have been warned!

Okay, if you're still reading I'm going to assume that you've read Feed and jump straight into Deadline. It picks up a few months after the end of Feed and is narrated in first person by Shaun Mason. Ever since his adoptive sister George died in Feed, Shaun has been a lost person. He and George were one person, they just happened to share two bodies. Without George, poking zombies with a stick isn't fun anymore.

Shaun still runs the news blogging site (The End of the World Times) that he and his sister founded, but he's not active in the field anymore, and the guy who really runs the organisation is their man in London; Mahir Gowda. Shaun wants to stay out of the spotlight and deal with the mess his life is without Georgia. Being an Irwin, Shaun never really had a firm grip on sanity, but George's death seems to have knocked it looser than ever. She's dead and he still talks to her...and she answers back.

That's how it is until a refugee from the CDC (Centre for Disease Control); Dr Kelly Connolly, turns up on his doorstep and the subsequent spontaneous zombie outbreak manages to destroy their headquarters in Oakland. Events that also lead to the book's first significant death. From then on it's Shaun and his team of motley outlaw bloggers against the world, as it becomes clear they're about to blow the lid off one of the biggest cover ups in world history.

I'll make it clear that I adored Feed. It was one of my favourite reads of 2010, and I'm tickled pink that it's been deservedly nominated for the Hugo this year. I went into Deadline with some big expectations and for the most part it meets them. Not to say that it isn't without it's problems. It suffers from the lack of George and my own favourite character from Feed; techno whiz Fictional, Georgette 'Buffy' Messonier. I liked Shaun okay in Feed when he was filtered through Georgia's perspective, but with his somewhat hazy hold on sanity, and having him as the primary narrator makes him into a bit of an arsehole and somewhat hard to identify with. However I did like the urbane, anglo Indian Mahir Gowda and was glad he got a bigger role in Deadline. I also warmed to Shaun's fellow Irwin Rebecca 'Becks' Atherton, and head Fictional Magdalene 'Maggie' Garcia and her herd of miniature epileptic bulldogs were also suitably quirky. While, she was also at times a pain in the backside (possibly this is a side effect of living in a world where anyone can spontaneously turn into a flesh eating zombie), I was quite impressed with the no nonsense, tough talking, renegade medical researcher Dr Shannon Abbey.

Deadline does suffer a little from 'second book in a trilogy' syndrome in that for the first half of the book it's quite heavy on the exposition. It does a lot of 'this is what you missed' early on, before it gets into the new story. I do understand that not everyone picks up trilogies from the first book, but I felt this was overdone and I also would have appreciated a little less of Shaun explaining to everyone that he does talk to his dead sister and she talks back, but he's not all the way crazy.

Once you get over the half way mark the story ratchets up a notch or twelve, the action gets really tense and full on and the body count rises. As with Feed, I began to become concerned for the key members of the cast and know that not everyone was going to make it to the final page. Mira Grant is a master at this and I love her and her work for it.

After reading the Coda of Deadline and saying 'WTF?!' (anyone who says they saw that coming is lying) I'm now eagerly awaiting Blackout next year.

When will you rise?

Power and Majesty

I really wanted to like Power and Majesty. Naff cover aside, it looked relatively decent and it was by a local author. Tansy Rayner Roberts hails from the Apple Isle of Tasmania.

It started off quite promisingly, a faux Renaissance setting, which for some reason kept making me think of Tasmanian capital Hobart, although it was very obviously based on one of the old European city states. Three young apprentices: the spoilt and flight Delphine, the no nonsense and practical Rhian and the shy and dreamy Velody find themselves in the bustling city of Aufleur and apprenticed. The three girls share a house and open their own business and that's about where things went off the rails.

Velody had long since managed to put some of the odd things she'd seen; a naked boy falling from the sky, mice following her around, to the back of her mind and establish a good, if unremarkable life for herself in Aufleur, and that's when she meets Ashiol, a noble, who advises her that she is one of the unknown society of the nox, those powerful individuals who rule the night and prevent Aufleur from being swallowed by the sky.

From that point on I felt the book lost focus. The people of the nox weren't described very well and there didn't seem to be any real reason that Velody was their leader; the Power and Majesty, other than the fact that she was the book's central character. I never bought her relationship with Ashiol and the only two characters I felt any sympathy for were the damaged Rhian (she was raped during one of the city's many festivals) and Velody's bodyguard MacCready.

Being a member of the Creature Court was confusingly outlined. Some could turn into animals and fight the sky, others couldn't. The more powerful ones could be hurt by a material called sky silver, but this was only wielded by the less powerful members. They seemed to be a cross between weres and vampires of some sort, with a bit of faery thrown in for good measure. I didn't understand the fight against the sky that seemed to go on every night.

The book's opening and the detailed glossary at the back showed that a huge amount of work and thought went into Power and Majesty, but it was let down by execution. It had real potential, but won't be recognised by me. There are further books in the series, one is already out, but I'm going to leave it with this one.

A Feast Unknown

Phillip Jose Farmer is the first of the 'F's. I'd read an enjoyed his Riverworld series years ago, and although I was aware that much of his other work shared a certain reputation amongst SFF readers I still wanted to read some more of him, so A Feast Unknown interested me.

The premise is pretty fantastical. Lord Grandrith (a thinly disguised version of Tarzan) and Doc Caliban (an equally thinly disguised version of another pulp hero; Doc Savage) are both the sons of Jack the Ripper, but have grown up far apart and are not aware that they are in fact half brothers.

Calban, believing that Grandrith has abducted and killed his cousin goes after the King of the Apes (Grandrith refers to them as the Free Folk) in Africa. The two men find that they have actually been duped into conflict by the Nine (an ancient council that controls the world), so team up against the Nine, but eventually fight due to an old prophecy that Caliban believes in. The book is left fairly open ended and there were at least two sequels.

Much of it read like a contemporary action/adventure novel and could have almost been written by Wilbur Smith, except for the Nine (although some of the stuff in the Warlock series was equally crazy) and the regular references to erections and ejaculation. Farmer seems to have a fascination for it. I understood that both Grandrith and Caliban were physically aroused by the act of violent killing, I did not need it reiterated every single time this happened. Apparently this is also a theme in other Farmer novels.

It's never been made clear if the Tarzan and Savage in this book are related or one and the same as the characters in Farmer's Wold Newton concept and related novels.

I did appreciate the regular comments Grandrith used to refer to his 'biographer' and how he corrected him or filled in blanks. Edgar Rice Burroughs is never mentioned by name, but there can be little doubt as to who Grandrith's biographer was.

It was a fairly unremarkable read, the action sequences were done well, but the repeated and intricated detailed sexual reactions to the act of killing were both repetitious and unnecessary.

I'm not really sure why Riverworld (at least the first book; To Your Scattered Bodies Go), wasn't recommended instead of this as an instance of Farmer's work. It may be due to the fact that some of it is science fiction, but it's a far better book and better known.

If you wanted to read in this vein I'd recommend Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan books, if you wanted to read more Phillip Jose Farmer then you can't go past the Riverworld series.

Magician's Gambit

Magician’s Gambit contains pretty much everything that is both good and bad about The Belgariad and David Eddings writing as a whole.

I’ll start with the bad and to be honest that will be the longer list.

Garion and Co spend most of their time wandering around trying to get their hands on some magical artefact called the Orb of Aldur. Big Fat Fantasy authors seem to love aimless wandering through their worlds, fans don’t for the most part like it. Eddings breaks up the meandering with regular explosions of violence. Sometimes the fights add to the narrative, but mostly they seem to be there to try and hold the reader’s interest. A particularly pointless and ridiculous example featuring Mimbrate knight Mandorallen taking on a lion springs to mind immediately.
While I’m on Mandorallen; his accent slips throughout Magician’s Gambit. When the character was introduced in Queen of Sorcery he spoke an exaggerated form of ‘old English’, peppering his speech with thees and thous, either it got too hard or the author just forgot at times, because sometimes he does it other times he doesn’t.
You never worry about anyone important to the plot being killed off when reading Eddings, he simply will not do it, he won’t even let his major characters get scuffed up too badly. An example is fan favourite Prince ‘Silk’ Kheldar of Drasnia. He is captured and put in a prison made of natural rock, awaiting a pretty nasty execution. His prison is virtually impenetrable, the only way in is to go directly through the rock. How fortunate that the newest member of the team (the religious zealot Relg) can phase through rock and even take someone with him. Later in the book Garion finds himself in a spot of trouble with Brill (whose real name was Kordoch and he was some sort of ninjaesque assassin) and Silk comes to his rescue. Silk’s always been good with throwing knives and creeping up on people unawares, but apparently he’s also The Belgariad’s answer to Jackie Chan. All of this completely ignores the fact that by now, with his growing magical talent, Garion should be able to kill Brill/Kordoch before the assassin even gets close to him.
You can’t think too deeply when reading any of Eddings work, if you do you ask yourself why when the group contains two members with godlike power (Belgarath and Polgara) is any of what you’re reading necessary. They also meet two actual Gods in Magician’s Gambit who appear to be completely powerless to help them in any way shape or form.
I think a lot of people quite liked Belgarath’s sorcerer ‘brothers’. I have to admit I didn’t mind Beldin, he occasionally crosses the line from humourous into parody, but he’s rather amusing. The twins who speak for each other were absolutely cringe inducing, though.

Now the good. Unfortunately there’s not a lot. One is that large parts of this book were told from the point of view of the tiny half dryad Tolnedran princess; Ce’Nedra. Of all of Eddings’ creations Ce’Nedra would have to be my favourite, and I appreciated seeing things from her naïve, self centred, bratty perspective. Ce’Nedra really should have been the central character, she’s far more interesting and multi dimensional than the drippy farmboy Garion.
No one reads an Eddings for character development, it’s non existent for the most part, they're all walking cliches, but there was a little bit of it in Magician’s Gambit and from a most unlikely source. Durnik actually shows a ruthless streak if pushed. Up until that point I’d barely even noticed him. He’d only really been mentioned when they needed someone to chop firewood or get angry when Beldin threw a particularly offensive insult at Polgara.
There were a couple of interesting magical creations. The carnivorous horses; Hrulgin, were both nasty and tough, as was the ogrelike Algrak; Grul. Shame that Grul perished, because he was a more interesting villain than the stereotypical Ctuchik.

Side note: I was a little disappointed to find that the term ‘magician’ in Eddings’ world is an insulting way of saying ‘sorceror’, because the title of Magician’s Gambit is my favourite of the five books in the series.

I’ll keep going, but only because I’ve promised myself that I will.