Backpacked - Catherine Ryan Howard

    2011; 278 pages.  Full Title: Backpacked: A Reluctant Trip Across Central America.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Travel; Central America; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Backpacking.  An alternative way to visit get the “real feel” of an area you’re visiting for the first time.

 

    Throw everything you need into a giant fabric pack that's made to be carried around on your back.  And not some pansy-wansy Boy Scout-sized knapsack.  It has to hold everything you’d normally stow in one or more suitcases, because you’ll be dispensing with that amenity.

 

    This isn't the same as "roughing it".  You don't have to sleep on the ground out in the forest or cook your own meals over a rustic campfire.  Youth hostels, inns, and hotels are all acceptable, as are cafés, restaurants, and even fast-food joints, depending on your budget.  You can even party-hearty and partake of alcoholic beverages, all in the name of socializing with the locals.  Doesn’t this all sound like a heckuva lot of fun?

 

    Nope, not to me.  But I’d love to read a book about someone else who’s done it.

 

What’s To Like...

    Backpacked chronicles Catherine Ryan Howard’s 2008 travels throughout Central America in 2008 with her friend Sheelagh.  By her count, over a nine-week period they visited five countries, saw twenty-two different places, stayed in seventeen different rooms, taken ten different modes of transport, dipped their toes in four different bodies of water, and all without wearing a scrap of make-up.

 

    Both the author and Sheelagh are Irish, hence the book is written in English, not American.  So temperatures are given in degrees Centigrade, speeds are in kilometres-per-hour, at times you can’t be arsed, and if you come down with diarrhoea, you'll be forced to use the loo.

 

    Backpacked is a travelogue, so it's written in the first-person point-of-view of the author.  The 278 pages are divided into seventeen chapters (plus a prologue and an epilogue), all of similar length, and further grouped into five sections which correspond to the Central American nations the two wayfarers visit: Guatemala (chs. 1-9), Honduras (chs. 10-13), Nicaragua (chs. 14-15), Costa Rica (ch. 16), and Panama (ch. 17).

 

    I liked the “balance” between the adventures and misadventures that Catherine Ryan Howard experiences.  Some of the people she crosses paths with are obnoxious, others are a treat to meet.  Some situations she finds herself in are downright dangerous, others induce complete relaxation.  Some of the places where she stays are ratty, others are picturesque.  Sometimes there’s a cool breeze, other times the weather is unbearably hot and humid.

 

    The author’s opinion about outdoor activity matches up closely with my own (see the first excerpt below), so does the fact that she’s both a bookaholic and an introvert.  It was fun to learn about chicken buses (see the second excerpt below) and tuk-tuks, and I’d really love to be able to see the white haze of the Milky Way at least once while stargazing.  I’d never heard of the word “frienaissance” and didn’t have a clue who Liz Lemon was, so had to look up both of those terms.

 

    The book closes with a neat Epilogue, detailing how this trip led to a career turn in Catherine Ryan Howard’s life, and where Sheelagh ended up the following year.  If you’ve ever had any aspirations to be a self-published indie author (full disclosure: I don’t), you'll probably find the epilogue to be motivational.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.0/5 based on 258 ratings and 247 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.68/5 based on 774 ratings and 87 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    I hate anything that involves jumping, diving, falling, climbing or the need for a life jacket, and I only run if it’s away.  The sum total of my environmental efforts is watching An Inconvenient Truth – on board a less than half-empty 747 somewhere over the Atlantic, I kid you not.  I think being stoned all the time makes you… well, stoned all the time, or looking like a glassy-eyed, giggling idiot to me.  I don’t much like random strangers, which is to say that I’m not convinced that befriending the drunken guy in the corner and letting him talk to me for an hour about how we should all “believe in the trees” is the best possible use of my time.  (loc. 222)

 

    A chicken bus is, typically, a former US school bus – if you’re not American, those are the yellow buses you see in movies and on TV – that has been aesthetically reinvigorated with a colourful, occasionally psychedelic paint job and then released into the closest thing the country has to a public transport system.  Although they’ll deliver you to your destination for practically nothing - $1 or less – you’ll probably spend your journey with your face in someone else’s armpit and a chicken on your lap.  (loc. 2191)

 

Kindle Details…

    Alas, Backpacked is no longer available for the Kindle, which is also true of the author's other non-fiction books.  An Amazon reviewer in December 2017 also noted this, so I gather it is not a recent development.  Catherine Ryan Howard does offer five e-novels at Amazon, for the very reasonable cost of $0.99 apiece.  They appear to be mostly in the suspense-thriller genre.  You can pick up the paperback version of Backpacked at Amazon for a whopping $303.68 (*).  I assume that’s an entrepreneurial way of saying the book’s out-of-print.

 

    (*): Update: between writing that section and posting this review, the price for the paperback has dropped to $19.99.  Apparently, whoever’s been holding on to two copies of the paperback has decided to get real.

 

You can’t win an argument against an idiot because they don’t have to stick to the facts and you do.  (loc. 2977)

    I couldn't find much to quibble about in Backpacked.  It’s an incredibly “clean” book; I counted just eleven cusswords in the whole book.  Catherine and Sheelagh occasionally partake of a glass of wine or other alcohol, and they both smoke Marlboro Lights, but I don’t think little Tommy and Suzie are going to take up take up either vice due to reading this book.

 

    There is the usual amount of “spellchecker errors” found in self-published books.  Typos like peaked/peeked, Columbian/Colombian, wonder/wander, and two that made me chuckle: inequity/iniquity and tinkle/tinker.

 

    That’s about it for the nitpicking.  Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Backpacked, particularly since the previous travelogue I read was annoyingly negative (that review is here).  I can’t say this book made me want to go out and buy my own backpack, but I was left wondering whether there are any cruises around Central American available.  Maybe down the Caribbean side, through the Panama Canal, and up the Pacific side.  That would be awesome.

 

    8 Stars.  It's not for me to tell any author how to market their books, but methinks it's time to offer this book, and its “prequel”, Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida, in e-book format.

The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - Lawrence Block

   1995; 372 pages.  Book 7 (out of 12) in the “Bernie Rhodenbarr” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Crime Humor.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Meet Bernie Rhodenbarr, a burglar extraordinaire.  Or slightly more accurately, an ex-burglar, since he’s retired now, having found a new career as the owner of a used-book store.  It doesn’t pay as well as his old profession did, but the job security’s better and the police don’t hassle him as much anymore.  Bernie has found contentment.

 

    Now a new customer in the bookstore named Hugo Candlemas wants to hire Bernie for his burglary skills, for one night only.  But the pay is extremely lucrative, and the job sounds easy enough: break into an apartment, hunt for a portfolio, find it, and steal it. 

 

    Hugo Candlemas has taken several steps to make the heist as foolproof as possible.  He’s figured out a way to get around the pesky doorman, and assures Bernie that apartment's tenant will be out the entire evening.  What could possibly go wrong?

 

    Plenty, Bernie.  Plenty.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart follows Lawrence Block’s usual recipe for a Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery: an easy heist is planned, things go awry, Bernie and the police both try to solve the crime with grudgingly minimal cooperation, and everything eventually comes to a head with a bookstore meeting of all the suspects called by Bernie once he’s figured everything out.  It's a good recipe.

 

    There are plenty of plotlines to keep the things moving.  Corpses show up along the way; all of the suspects seem to have hidden pasts; and things disappear, including Bernie’s attaché case, his latest love interest, and the coveted portfolio.  When the attaché case does resurface, it has an enigmatic message scrawled on it.  It’s meaning seemed obvious to me, but not to Bernie, and it turns out I was obviously wrong.

 

    The book’s title references Bernie’s current cultural craze: watching oodles and oodles of Humphrey Bogart films at the local theater, preferably with a beautiful female companion accompanying him.  Booklovers will enjoy the many literary nods Lawrence Block scatters throughout the tale, including the novelist P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves), the poet Winthrop Mackworth Praed (who?), and the loquacious historian team of Will and Ariel Durant, co-authors of an 11-volume, 13,549-page compendium called the Story of Civilization, which Amazon offers in e-book form for a mere $99.99.  There’s even a recurring playful wink at Sue Grafton’s “alphabetical” series with the facetious titles of ‘A’ is for Train, ‘Q’ is for Gardens, and ‘I’ is for Claudius, and it wasn't until writing this review that I "got" those bits of wit.

 

    Along the way we learn that Bernie’s middle name is ‘Grimes’, his favorite charity is the AHDA (American Hip Dysplasia Association), and the patron saint of burglars is St. Dismas.  One of the characters is fond of the word “anon” and the use of the subjunctive case, which meant I liked him immediately.  There really is a small village in New York called Quogue (pronounced "kwog"), but the "Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization" and the short-lived post-WW1 nation of "Anatruria" are both figments of Lawrence Block’s imagination.

 

    As always, the story is told in the first-person POV (Bernie’s), and as always the witty dialogue, Bernie’s charisma, and the plethora of interesting characters – some new, others recurring – kept me turning the pages.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Loid (v.) : to open (a locked door) by sliding a thin piece of celluloid or plastic between the door edge and doorframe to force open a spring lock.

Others: Thaler (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 122 ratings and 58 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.89*/5, based on 2,628 ratings and 149 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    What can I say?  I steal things.  Cash, ideally, but that’s harder and harder to find in this age of credit cards and twenty-four-hour automatic teller machines.  There are still people who keep large quantities of money around, but they typically keep other things on hand as well, such as wholesale quantities of illegal drugs, not to mention assault rifles and attack-trained pit bulls.  They lead their lives and I lead mine, and if the twain never get around to meeting, that’s fine with me.  (pg. 4)

 

    “What’s on the program, a poetry reading?”

    “Not exactly.”

    “Because I didn’t know you were into that.  I read some of my own stuff a while back at a little place on Ludlow Street.  Café Villanelle?”

    “Black walls and ceiling,” I said.  "Black candles set in cat-food cans.”

    “Hey, you know it!  Not many people even heard of the place.”

    “It may take a while to find its audience,” I said, trying not to shudder at the memory of Emily Dickinson sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and a lifetime supply of in-your-face haiku.  (pg. 285)

 

“You Assyrian guttersnipe.  You misbegotten Levantine dwarf.”  (pg. 291)

    There’s only a sprinkling of cussing in The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart.  I noted only 11 of them in the first quarter of the book, which included only one f-bomb.

 

    I was a tad bit disappointed in the ending.  Yes, it was both twisty and complicated – and that’s always something to look forward to in a Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery.  And yes, I’m happy to say I picked up on the key clue, although I didn’t know what to make of it, whereas Bernie did.  So what's my gripe?

 

    Well, I cringed at the final resolution of all the skullduggery.   Crimes were committed, perpetrators were unveiled, but even though the NYPD was present, no arrests were made.  What kind of object lesson is that?  Yeah, I know.  Picky, picky.

 

    Nevertheless, overall I still enjoyed The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart.  I'd call it a good, but not great, addition to Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr series.  It kept me entertained, despite the bit of stumbling at the end.

 

    7 Stars.  One last chuckle about The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart.  I chuckled at the “euphemisms for a euphemism” coined by Carolyn.  Instead of “a roll in the hay”, or other, more direct descriptive phrases, she opts for “a flop in the feathers” and “a tumble in the feathers”.  It’s little things like this that have made me a fan of this series.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Clmbed Out the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson

   2012; 388 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the series “The Hundred-Year-Old Man”.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Satire; Swedish Literature & Fiction; Humorous Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Allan Karlsson turns 100 years old today.  The Old Folks’ Home where he lives has planned a party to celebrate this and it starts in an hour.

 

    Allan has lived a full and exciting life, although he rarely talks about it.  No one at the rest home would believe him anyway.

 

    Allan’s not looking forward to the party.  That bad-tempered old Director Alice most likely won’t allow him to drink any vodka.  So he decides to go on one last adventure before he dies.  He stuffs what little money he still has into his pocket, and like the title says, climbs out the window and walks away.  He’ll catch a bus at the nearby station and disappear by going as far as his cash will take him.  Which admittedly isn’t very far.

 

    Director Alice will be livid.  When she catches up to him, I’d hate to be in Allan’s shoes.  Well, in his slippers, actually.  Allan didn’t do much planning for this escape.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared was published in September 2009.  It was Jonas Jonasson’s debut novel, became a bestseller in Sweden in 2010, and by 2012 had sold three million copies worldwide.  The original language is Swedish of course, and it was translated into English in 2012 by Rod Bradbury.  The story chronicles both Allan’s current escapade, and the various adventures he'd experienced over the course of his long life.

 

    This is a “humorous satire” novel, with most of the funniness being of a “gentle” kind, despite several deaths occurring along the way.  In a nutshell, if you liked Forrest Gump, you’ll like this book.  The present-day tale begins in a small Swedish village called Malmkoping, which really exists (population: 1,977 in 2010), with Allan’s past history interspersed throughout the story as a series of flashbacks.  You’ll also spend some time in a town with the bizarre name of Yxhult, also real, and which thankfully has a phonetic pronunciation. 

 

    Allan apparently had a lifelong knack for crossing paths with world leaders.  His name-dropping list includes Mao Tse-Tung, Josef Stalin, Generalissimo Franco, Charles de Gaulle, and US presidents Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  All these luminaries remember him fondly and will put in a good word or do him a favor if asked.  Like Forrest Gump, Allan offers some keen insights along the way on topics such as world politics, religion, U.S. foreign policy, and the Korean War.  Bear in mind that Sweden historically is a neutral country, and Allan’s viewpoints often reflect this.

 

    Allan’s did a lot of globetrotting in his life, so the reader is treated to bits and pieces of a bunch of languages.  You’ll learn to cuss in both Farsi (“Khafe sho!”) and Spanish (Vete a la mierda!”), as well as the Balinese word for frog (“kodok”), a Russian maxim about not combining smoking and football, plus several Indonesian words for ordering food in a restaurant.  You’ll even hear Stalin give a Swedish toast (“Helam gar, sjung hopp federallan lallan lej!”).

 

    On a more practical level, you’ll learn how to brew vodka from goats’ milk, and the secret recipe for making the tastiest watermelons in the world.  Trivia buffs will enjoy learning about Sonya Hedenbratt and Georgy Flyorov (both real people), the early 20^th-century practice of forced castration of those deemed “mentally infirm” (also real, even in the US!), and the mysterious World War 2 disappearance of Glenn Miller.  And spiritually, you’ll find out how to get kicked out of both Jehovah Witnesses and Pentecostal congregations.

 

    The book closes with Allan’s “past” storyline finally catching up to his “present” one.  In true Forrest-Gumpian style, all turns out well for Allan and his chums, including Buster and Sonya (who?), and except for the fox and the kitten.  Incredibly, given that Allan is a centenarian, there is a 2018 sequel to this story: The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Dab Hand (n., phrase) : a person who is an expert at a particular activity (a Britishism).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.3*/5, based on 19,198 ratings and 14,787 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.81*/5, based on 242,371 ratings and 24,749 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Allan said that he wasn’t dead, and if the Popov couple wanted to make sure he didn’t freeze to death it would be best if they immediately lead him to a restaurant where he could get some vodka and perhaps a bite to eat.

    “It really is you…” Yuri finally managed to exclaim.  “But … you speak Russian…?”

    “Yes.  I went on a five-year course in your country’s language shortly after we last met,” said Allan.  “The school was called Gulag.  What about the vodka?”  (loc. 4879)

 

    “What do you want me to help you with if I may ask?” said Allan.  “There are only two things I can do better than most people.  One of them is to make vodka from goats’ milk, and the other is to put together an atom bomb.”

   “That’s exactly what we’re interested in,” said the man.

    “The goats’ milk?”

    “No,” said the man.  “Not the goats’ milk.”  (loc. 5362)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who … Disappeared currently sells for $9.99 at Amazon.  Its sequel, The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man, is priced at $11.99.  Jonas Jonasson has one other e-book in English: The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden, and it goes for a mere $1.99 right now.  You can also pre-order his next novel, Sweet Sweet Revenge, for $14.99, which is due to be released May 31, 2022.

 

“Father Ferguson wasn’t a man who took a no for a no.”  (loc. 2173)

    The quibbles are minor.  There’s a small amount of cussing: 17 instances in the first 20%, including one use of the f-bomb.  One wonders what those words are in the original Swedish tongue.  Also, although I wouldn’t call our protagonist a flawed character, he is capable of larceny, lying, and accidental manslaughter.

 

    The template for handling dialogue was annoyingly awkward.  No quotation marks are used; instead it starts the talking with an “em dash”, then lets you guess where it ends and where the next bit of conversation resumes.  And yes, I reformatted the conversations in the two excerpts given above into the standard style for dialogue.  It appeased my OCD.

 

    8 Stars.  I enjoyed The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who … Disappeared, which says something since I wasn’t wowed by Forrest Gump.  The translating felt smooth, the wit was my kind of humor, Allan was my kind of hero, even the baddies had some redeeming qualities, and the storyline had lots of over-the-top antics.  It kept my interest throughout and I’m looking forward to reading the sequel.

Somebody To Love? - Grace Slick

   1998; 364 pages.  Full Title: Somebody to Love? – A Rock-and-Roll Memoir.  New Author(s)? : Yes (and Yes).  Genres: Music History; Rock Music; Autobiography.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    Jefferson Airplane.  They were one of the top rock bands of the 1967 “Summer of Love”, thanks mostly to their fantastic breakout album Surrealistic Pillow, which had two songs, Somebody To Love and White Rabbit, that later made it onto Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

 

    Most people don’t realize that Surrealistic Pillow was actually the band’s second release.  Their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, had been released a year earlier, and garnered almost zero excitement.

 

    There were a couple of personnel changes between the two albums: a new drummer, and a new female vocalist, with Grace Slick replacing Signe Anderson, who quit to devote time to her newborn daughter.

 

    Interestingly, Grace Slick is credited with writing White Rabbit, and her then-brother-in-law is credited with writing Somebody to Love.  The two songs on the "500 Greatest" list.  So, was Jefferson Airplane's adding Grace Slick to the band and their simultaneous meteoric rise to stardom a case of causation or correlation?

 

    Let’s read her autobiography Somebody To Love? and find out.

 

What’s To Like...

    Somebody to Love? was published in 1998, when Grace Slick (neé Grace Wing) was 59 years old and retired from the music scene.  The book includes lots of great photographs of Grace’s life, loves, career, cohorts.  It was co-written by a friend of hers, Andrea Cagan (you can see her name in the bottom right-hand corner of the cover image), and the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book gives a nice thank-you to Andrea by Grace as well as detailing how the whole writing thing worked.

 

    The first hundred pages or so chronicle Grace’s childhood, schooling (she went to a snotty “finishing school for girls” for a while), and first marriage, all of which was surprisingly interesting.  You’ll learn why her family nickname when growing up was “Grouser”, what her slang word “toodles” refers to, tag along for her “first time”, and marvel that her first songwriting effort managed to offend a bunch of “preppy boys” at a college party, causing them to ask her to leave and never come back.

 

    The next two hundred pages are pretty much an extended discourse about sex and drugs and rock-and-roll, and booze, all of which Grace embraced with passionate persistence.  Musically, these chapters cover her time with the bands The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Starship, and a short-lived solo career.

 

    Grace Slick does a lot of name-dropping here, which is a plus, not a minus.  Besides her bandmates, some of the notables include: JFK (before he was president), Jerry Garcia, Neal Cassady (a Merry Prankster), Wavy Gravy (who?), David Crosby, Mick Jagger, Frank Zappa, Abbie Hoffman, Craig Chaquico (who?), and Mickey Hart.  She credits Randy Newman, Odetta, and Lenny Bruce with each having a significant impact on her musical career.  Oh yeah, there's also a threesome involving Grace, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and a plate of strawberries.  Chapter 26 is devoted to that.

 

    The last 70 pages show us the present-day (in 1998) Grace Slick: calm, content, and gratefully retired from the excesses of being a rock-and-roll star.  She wishes her parents were still alive, is proud as any mother can be of her daughter China, has had enough of cheating husbands, offers some thoughts about geezer-aged rock bands reuniting for a brief time (one tour, one album), and introduces us to her current flame, Buckminister Ratcliff Esquire III, whose fat, furry body Grace loves to play with.  Get your mind out of the gutter, he’s a lab rat.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 405 ratings and 175 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.74/5 based on 1,345 ratings and 113 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Girl-ask-boy dance.  Okay.  I went straight to the top by asking the school’s star quarterback to be my date.  He was older and he didn’t know who the hell I was, but he said yes.  Polite, I guess.  I bought a pink, flower-covered, wedding cake-like monstrosity of a dress and went with Mr. Hotshot to a pre-dance party thrown by a senior cheerleader.  She opened the door in a red, body-hugging floor-length number with four-inch dangling earrings, which made me look like an exploding cotton candy machine.  (pg. 49)

 

    In 1988, Paul called together all the original members of Jefferson Airplane and suggested a short (one album, one tour) reunion.  After some brief discussion about logistics, we all agreed to the adventure.

    Fantastic, I thought.  This time Airplane will be assisted by one of those professional management teams in L.A. (as opposed to well-meaning hippies from San Francisco) who really know how to put a rock-and-roll package together.  Now that we’re all old enough to prefer seamless negotiations, it’ll be a snap.

    Sure, Grace, and polar bears use toilets.  (pg. 323)

 

I was naïve enough to be sucked in by the “Wanna see my Bugatti?” routine.  (pg. 60)

    I don’t really have any great quibbles about Somebody to Love?  Yes, there was some cussing, but a lot less than what I expected – just 9 instances in the first 20% of the book.  Yes, Grace hopped into bed with all sorts of guys, especially musicians, including most (but not quite all) of her fellow members of Jefferson Airplane.  But there were no lurid details (not even about those strawberries), and hey, most readers expect a rock star’s bio to include some romantic trysts.

 

      Personally, I would’ve liked more pages devoted to the Jefferson Airplane/Starship  years but let's remember that Somebody to Love? is story about Grace Slick’s life, not about those bands.  And perhaps some negative details are omitted due to not wanting to dwell on the trials and tribulations of the daily coexistence with one’s bandmates.

 

    Finally, it would be nice to have an updated version of this book, since it’s been 23 years since Somebody to Love? was published, and Grace Slick is still alive and in her early 80s.   But if you’re dying to know what she’s been up to in the last quarter century, you can read Wikipedia’s post on her here.

 

    All in all, I enjoyed Somebody to Love?  The content is a nice balance between the flower-power lifestyle of the 1960s, the human side of being in a top-tier band, and the challenge of having a stable personal life all at the same time.  The chapters are short (54 of them covering 364 pages) which made this a quick, easy, and informative read, and since I was a teenager myself in the 1960s, the book brought back some great memories of my salad days.

 

    8½ Stars.  Here’s a few other noteworthy highlights of the book: Grace’s introduction to LSD (pg. 94); her first peyote trip (pgs. 90-91, which also brought back old memories), getting busted again and again (ch. 30), playing “butt bongo” on the Howard Stern Show (pg. 332), and her love for the music of The Gipsy Kings (pgs, 351 and 359).

The Scar - China Miéville

   2002; 578 pages.  Book Two (out of three) in the “Bas-Lag” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Steampunk Fiction; Weird Fantasy.  Laurels: 2003 British Fantasy Award (winner); 2003 Locus Award (winner); nominated for 2002 British Science Fiction Award, 2002 Phillip K. Dick Award, 2003 Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2003 Hugo Award, and 2003 World Fantasy Award.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Bellis Coldwine is going on an extended cruise.  She boarded the ship Terpsichoria in the capital city of New Crobuzon and is headed for the distant port of Nova Esperium.

 

    The Terpsichoria is not your typical cruise ship though.  It’s primarily used to transport slaves throughout the empire although paying passengers such as Bellis are also welcomed.  But this is not a pleasure voyage for Bellis; it’s one of desperation.  Her friends and acquaintances in New Crobuzon have been “disappearing” in the middle of the night, and it's not hard to figure out that it won’t be long before whoever the abductors are, probably the New Crobuzon militia, will soon be coming for her as well.

 

    Alas, Fate has a detour in store for Bellis.  The open sea is a dangerous place, and the Terpsichoria has just been captured by pirates.  They’re freeing the slaves and press-ganging both them and passengers into becoming residents of the floating pirate metropolis of Armada.

 

    Oh well.  Any port in a storm is fine by Bellis.  What’s important to her is where she’s fleeing from, not where she is, or where she’s going.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Scar is the second book in China Miéville’s “Bas-Lag” trilogy.  It’s not really a sequel, but it’s set in the same world as Book One, Perdido Street Station, which I read more than ten years ago and is reviewed here.

 

    China Miéville’s world-building in The Scar is both ambitious and masterfully done.  Most of the story takes place on the giant ocean-borne city of Armada, which has citizens dwelling both above and below the water surface.  The city itself is made up of dozens upon dozens of watercraft seized by the pirates, welded together, and converted into an urban area.  That may sound a bit contrived, but in Miéville’s hands it works perfectly.

 

    The character development is equally dazzling.  For the most part, we follow Bellis's adventures and intrigues, as she struggles to come to grips with the fact that Armada is both her new and permanent home.  We meet all sorts of sentient species that have found a haven in, under, and around Armada, including crays (half-human/half crayfish), cactacae (“cactus people”), dinichthys (“bonefish”), vampires (called “vampir”), anophelli (“mosquito people”), scabmettlers, grindylow, and the bizarre, artificially-fashioned “Remade”.  Who knows, maybe we'll even spot a creature called the godwhale, otherwise known as the "mountain-that-swims".

 

    Lots of species means lots of spoken languages, and Bellis finds herself in a key position of a translator due to her working knowledge of some of the more arcane tongues.  She may not be fluent in all of these, but for now she’s the best resource the wandering pirates have got.

 

    The storyline is complex, which is typical for China Miéville novels.  The reasons for Bellis’s fleeing New Crobuzon remain obscure for a long time, as does her determination to eventually return there.  Other press-ganged passengers from the Terpsichoria have their own reasons for wanting to contact New Crobuzon officials and some pirate leaders have their own agendas for steering Armada to uncharted waters.  It was a fun challenge to figure out who was using whom, and what ulterior motives the various main characters had.  It takes a while for the action to kick in alongside the intrigue, but once it does, you are treated to several exciting, chapter-long battle scenes.

 

    There is some magic (called “thaumaturgy”) present in the tale, including some very useful charmed artifacts, but it doesn’t overwhelm the storyline.  I liked the concept of “probability mining”, and chuckled at the fact that book-hoarding was considered a serious crime in the Garwater sector of Armada.  Miéville's choice of words is a vocabulary-lover’s delight: my favorites are given below, but there were lots more.

 

    Everything builds to a suitably exciting ending, including several twists to keep you on the edge of your seat.  In the end, Armada and its inhabitants are saved from a dire fate.  Or did they chicken out and miss a chance to gain unprecedented power?  That remains for the surviving characters, as well as the reader, to ponder.  Only China Miéville knows the answer.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Gurned (v.) : made a grotesque face (British).

Others: Disphotic (adj.); Integument (n.), Adumbrating (v.); Fatuous (adj.), Raddled (v.); Delimited (v.), Pusillanimous (adj.); Tup (v.), Detumescent (adj.); Bathetic (adj.), Benthic (adj.); Kitted (v., British), Blebbed (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 527 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 29,260 ratings and 1,817 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    In New Crobuzon, what was not regulated was illicit.  In Armada, things were different.  It was, after all, a pirate city.  What did not directly threaten the city did not concern its authorities.  Bellis’ message, like other secrets, did not have to strive to be covert, as it might back home to avoid the militia.  Instead, it sped through this wrangling city with ease and speed, leaving a little trail for those who knew how to look.  (loc. 6141)

 

    “They knew how to pick at the might-have-beens and pull out the best of them, use them to shape the world.  For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes.  Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers—and one comes true.

    “But the Ghosthead knew how to tap some of those that might have been.”  (loc. 6703)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Scar is presently priced at $11.99 at Amazon.  The other two books in the series go for $9.99 (Perdido Street Station) and $10.99 (The Iron Council).  China Miéville has another dozen or so full-length e-books for your Kindle, most of them fiction, ranging in price from $7.99 to $13.99.

 

Let’s help you come up with my plan.  (loc. 3646)

    It’s hard to find anything to quibble about in The Scar.  It took me a while to figure out what the main plotline was, but I suspect this was a deliberate on the part of Miéville, since it allows the reader to soak up the mesmerizing atmosphere of life on Armada.

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing, with the f-bomb and variations of damn being the most popular choices, although the fabulous word "shat" also makes an appearance.  Cusswords involving deities are common too, with a majority of them invoking a local god called “Jabber”.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay by Bellis, one allusion to auto-eroticism, and repeated instances of "statuary-eroticism".  I'll let you muse on that last one.

 

    My final gripe is also the nit-pickiest: there are no maps, at least in the Kindle version of The Scar.  Given all the seafaring travel that Bellis and the pirates do, my brain was screaming for a chart showing this world.

 

    9½ Stars.  I’m of the opinion that, since the passing of Kurt Vonnegut some years back, the most skilled contemporary author is now China Miéville.  The Scar did nothing to change my viewpoint.  I have two more of his books sitting on my TBR shelf: Iron Council, which is the final book in this Bas-Lag trilogy, and October, a non-fiction historical account of the Russian revolution in October, 1917.  It’s a pleasant quandary to decide which of these I should read next.

The Fall - David L. Dawson

   2012; 310 pages.  Book 1 (out of 3) in “The God Slayers Quartet” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Post-Apocalyptic Thriller; LGBTQ+ Fiction; YA Dystopian Adventure.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Question: What should we mortals do when two gods are fighting each other?

 

    It’s a tricky conundrum.  The most logical thing is probably to reason with them and convince then to knock it off.  But gods have a habit of ignoring the advice of puny little humans, and besides, interrupting them by calling their attention to ourselves could seriously shorten our life expectancies.

 

    So maybe it’s better to just let them duke it out.  Except when a god gets knocked off his feet by a punch, he's likely to fall upon an entire village, flattening it and killing most, if not all, of the living things therein.

 

    There’s also a third, more radical option to consider: figuring out a way to kill both gods.  That seems counterintuitive though, because how does one go about killing beings who, by definition, are immortal?

 

    Even worse, what happens if they, or their followers, find out about your schemes?

 

What’s To Like...

    The Fall is the first book in a post-apocalyptic dystopian series by David L. Dawson called “The God Slayers Quartet”.  It takes place somewhere in the greater London area in the 27^th century, an its setting reminded me somewhat of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: some sort of disaster has wiped out most of civilization, with only scant details given about it.

 

    The story is told in the first-person POV, the protagonist being teenaged Ben Casper, the son of the mayor of the local village and who's just returned from his rite-of-passage allowing him into adulthood.  The book is divided into two parts: Part One, “The Glass Palace”, introduces us to the village and its inhabitants just prior to the titular event of “The Fall”, and Part Two, “Underground”, which chronicles the aftermath.

 

    The dialogue is oftentimes witty, and I liked that, and the writing is a curious blend of both “English” and “American”.  So you have lifts instead of elevators, and centres instead of centers.  But you also have meters, not metres; and specters, not spectres.  Somehow it works; I didn’t find it distracting at all.

 

    There are a couple of new creatures to meet and be wary of.  The felums are half-panther/half human and dangerously sentient.  The horned bears are just dangerously dangerous.  I enjoyed the nod to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and was happy to see that, in among all the action and excitement, you may find some Pratchettian points to ponder about religion and blind faith (see second excerpt, below).  And should those cause you any worry, fear not: repurposing will erase any theological doubts you might have.

 

    The ending is okay.  The storyline stops at a logical point, although none of the major plot threads are resolved and there aren't any twists.  That’s okay though, we’re all set for the next phase in Ben's adventure, and there’s a catchy little teaser at the close to get you ready for Book Two.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  3.9/5 based on 146 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.43/5 based on 303 ratings and 37 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Viridian (adj.) : Bluish-green in color.

 

 

Excerpts...

    “Every couple of years someone knocks at the door and it makes Father scared,” I explain hurriedly.  “Uncle Rooster and he go outside to meet whoever it is and then come back an hour later.  I want to know who it is they keep talking to, and why it makes him so nervous.”

    “It’s elder business.  We should not be … hmm, now you’ve made me curious.  Maybe they’re doing secret dealings with some shady trader?  Or what if they’re making plans to marry you off to some disease-ridden girl with three arms from another House?  That’s been known to happen.”  (loc. 903)

 

    “This is where the Order of Power comes in,” interrupts Harold.  “They’re the self-appointed church of the gods. The gods don’t care for them but they do their best to destroy any remaining information left in the world that pertains to the gods.  Any literature on the gods is burned and any person who knows anything about them is killed.  They want to gods to be revered in mystery, so the less we know about them the better."  (loc. 2219)

 

Kindle Details…

    You can get The Fall for free at Amazon, and I think that’s always true.  The other two books in the series go for $2.99 (The Sky is Falling) and $3.99 (Chasm).  David L. Dawson offers a couple of other series for your Kindle; the e-books in those range in price from free to $2.99.  He's also written several short stories and novellas, some of which tie in to The God Slayers Quartet setting, and you'll find them in the free-to-$0.99 price range .

 

“I don’t like books. (…) They smell funny and you can’t eat them.”  (loc. 178)

    There are some quibbles, including the usual spellchecker errors that spring up in most books penned and self-edited by indie authors.  Typos here include things such as lightening/lightning, its/it’s, principal/principle, topierce/to pierce, and my favorite: bowls/bowels.  Also, most of the plot twists seemed predictable to me; for instance, I figured out the talking bird enigma long before Ben did.

 

    Amazon labels this a “Teen and Young Adult Science Fiction” book, and I think that’s apt.  There’s almost no cussing (a couple of “damns” is all I noted), and teenage boys are most likely already familiar with a “morning phenomenon” cited a couple times.  The surreptitious note passed to Ben seemed like a WTF to me; I can’t believe he wouldn’t have been searched later when he fell into the hands of the baddies.

 

    You should be aware that the protagonist is gay.  If this makes you squeamish, you can take comfort in the fact that there is very little romance – gay, straight, or otherwise – in this tale, although I have no idea whether this remains true in the sequels.

 

    A number of Amazon and Goodreads reviewers gave the book demerits because the protagonist is kind of a jerk.  They have a point, but I suspect he will become less of one as the series progresses.

 

    ANAICT, The Fall was David L. Dawson’s first full-length novel, coming out in January, 2012.  Overall, I thought it was a decent first-effort, albeit with the usual room for improving the writing/polishing as his career progresses.  Looking at his list of Amazon e-books, however, it appears he hasn’t published anything new since 2014, which is a bit of a bummer.

 

    6 Stars.   I never did figure out what the “Quartet” in the book's subtitle refers to, although I suspect it means this was planned to be a 4-book series.  Several reviewers who have read the the whole series so far indicate that there is no closure at the end of Book Three.  That kind of confirms that the David L. Dawson has since retired from the indie author scene.  You should take this into consideration when deciding whether to read The Fall.