May
17,
2009
I’ve described myself as a “Dave Duncan fanboy” at least twice on this booklog, and only re-reading some old entries kept me from doing so a third time just now. One of the things I love so much about his work is that he doesn’t repeat himself. While his last series, for instance, was an epic fantasy set on a dodecahedronal world, his latest series — comprising Dave Duncan’s The Alchemist’s Apprentice, The Alchemist’s Code, and The Alchemist’s Pursuit
— is a series of mysteries set in a Renaissance Venice with about the amount of magic that Renaissance Venetians would have expected.
The protagonist is the youthful assistant to an aged seer named Nostradamus, who is occasionally called upon by the doge to investigate matters in an unofficial capacity. The resulting stories are some combination of light adventure, fantasy of manners, mystery, and straight historical fiction. It’s an airy and charming combination, and Duncan’s writing is, as ever, propulsive and appealing.
There aren’t a lot of epic fantasists who could so convincingly switch registers to write this sort of thing; it’s a testament to Duncan’s range that you could believe he’d written nothing else, and that he was an Ellis Peters-style writer of period mysteries. And while I’ve always loved, and continue to love, Duncan’s fantasy series, these were delicious enough that I almost wish he was a full-time mystery writer, and that there were a good dozen or so of these. Recommended.
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May
17,
2009
Douglas Adams is, of course, most famous for his Hitchhiker’s Guide books. And like any reasonable geek of a certain age, I read those in middle school about 20-30 times, to the point where I can almost open up to a random spot and start quoting.
But even after all that, I never can keep the rambling plot of the books straight. Which is why it was such a surprise to me to first read Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
back in the day. Because here’s a book whose plot seems at first to be just as shaggy and uncontrolled as that of the Hitchhiker’s Guide... except then it all fits together just so, and it turns out to be one of the most tightly-plotted books I’ve read.
Re-reading it now, it turns out to be just as tightly plotted as I remember, but also somewhat sadder. Adams’ work was always a mixture of humour and melancholy, and this is definitely tilted further toward the melancholy side than the Hitchhiker’s Guide, which is presumably why I re-read that one so often and this one not so much.
Still, it’s not depressingly bleak or anything (though I remember that the sequel is, so won’t be reading that again), and it’s a very well-done novel with lots of quotable bits and a memorable and unique story. If you haven’t read this, and you enjoy the more sober and well-done type of British humour, you should give it a go.
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May
17,
2009
Quick, name a Hugo-winning novel.
Did you say Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
? No, of course you didn’t, because despite having won a Hugo, it doesn’t seem to be a particularly major work in the field these days. Which is both strange and understandable.
Strange because though written in 1976, this is a book that’s ripped from today’s headlines. Catastrophic climate change, cloning, post-apocalyptic survival — all very relevant themes in today’s world. (Well, okay, cloning seems to be on a bit of a decline from the glory days of Dolly the sheep, but still.)
But understandable because those topics are sort of background material these days, so whatever originality and force of novelty this book had in 1976 is evaporated thirty-odd years later. And what’s left is a competently written but not outstanding novel harmed by a couple of major flaws — a three-part structure with big time skips makes it seem like a paste-up of short stories (which for all I know is true), and its conception of clones is rather weird by modern standards.
If you’re making a point of reading Hugo winners, you won’t be irritated by this one; if you’re not, there’s no particular reason to pick it up.
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May
15,
2009
Back when I was in junior high, I would look at the wall of tie-in
books — Dragonlance, Star Trek, Forgotten Realms — in Waldenbooks’ SF
section and sneer. Who’d read those trashy things, I always
wondered, as I picked up the vastly superior literary output of Terry
Brooks and David Eddings.
But then at some point, I had a philosophical epiphany, which was
that popular things are popular for a reason, and that instead of just
dismissing them as trash, I should try to figure out what that reason
is. So I bought a couple of DragonLance books — the Weis and Hickman
ones that start things off — and they were pretty decent, as fantasy
novels appealing to junior high kids go. So I then proceeded to buy
every novel TSR published — all the DragonLance, all the Forgotten
Realms. Yeah, I know. It’s how I roll.
But as I read them, I couldn’t help but note that a lot of them
were, how shall I put this... horrible. Because of course it turned
out that Weis and Hickman were vastly better writers than most of the
converted RPG-designers that they had churning out these other books.
But there were some exceptions, the most notable of which was
R. A. Salvatore, whose Drizzt books were up at that Weis/Hickman level
and stood way above the rest of the crowd.
We skip ahead now to my college years, when I had another
philosophical epiphany, which was: A lot of popular things are popular
because people have bad taste. In the grip of this epiphany, I
finally broke my TSR novel habit, and gave away a giant box of
terrible books to a surprised and grateful geek. But I did keep the
“good” books, those Weis/Hickman ones and all the Salvatore.
Fade to black again, and this time the curtain comes up on the
present. Well, okay, last month, due to the part where I’m
perpetually behind on this thing. Having just finished a book on
classical history, I’m in the mood for something counterbalancingly
trashy. Well, it turns out that I have R.A. Salvatore’s Passage
to Dawn
sitting around, and what’s trashier than the tenth
chronicle of Drizzt Do’Urden?
After reading it, I can officially say: Not a whole heck of a lot,
because boy howdy, this is some trashy trash. Either my high school
judgment of Salvatore was overly optimistic or my tastes have matured
quite a lot, because this book was just objectively bad in a whole
bunch of ways. The gamey roots of the novel were thrown right up
front, with explicit reference to game mechanics. I mean, look:
It was Robillard’s turn, and he focused on a single zombie that had
cleared the water and was ambling up the beach. ... A line of fire
rushed out from his pointing finger, reaching out to the unfortunate
target monster and then shrouding it in flames, an impressive display
that fully consumed the creature in but a few moments. Robillard,
concentrating deeply then shifted the line of fire, burning away a
second zombie.
“The scorcher,” he said when the spell was done. “A remnant from
the works of Agannazar.”
The first thing that’ll stand out to any player of Baldur’s Gate is
that they just name-checked a third-level wizard spell. And
accurately described its mechanics, down to the part where a
high-level wizard can target multiple enemies with a single
invocation. But beyond that, it’s hard not to wince at the writing.
“Target monster,” really?
So, yeah, the writing’s bad. The plotting’s also pretty lousy, the
characters are stereotypes, there are awful pretentious
“philosophical” interludes between sections of the book, and in
general the book has virtually nothing to recommend it.
Unless you grew up reading this stuff, anyway, in which case, it’s
a direct injection of nostalgia such as you can’t get many other ways,
which is why I secretly enjoyed reading it. Still, it’s impossible to
actually recommend this book, so what I’d instead suggest is that you
go back in time and read better stuff in junior high. You deserve a
better grade of nostalgia than this.
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