Sidetracked - Henning Mankell

1995 (Swedish) & 1999 (English); 421 pages. Laurels : 1995 Swedish Crime Writers Academy (Best Crime Novel); 2001 Crime Writers Association (Best Crime Novel). New Author? : No. Genre : Crime Fiction (Police Procedural). Overall Rating : 8*/10.

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It's been a tough two days for Detective Kurt Wallander. Yesterday he watched helplessly as a girl poured a gallon of gasoline over her head and lit a match. Today he's investigating why someone axed a retired Swedish statesman to death and then scalped him. He had hoped to go on vacation in a couple weeks, but that seems unlikely now.

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What's To Like...

This is a police procedural, not a whodunit. Mankell tells the story from both Wallander's and the killer's perspective, so you learn pretty quickly the identity of the latter. Then it's a matter of watching how Wallander works to catch the crafty killer.

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The pacing of the book is good, and there's enough action (mostly killings) throughout to avoid any dull stretches. The story is set in the Swedish summertime, which is a pleasant break from Mankell's earlier drab, wintry novels. There's a helpful map included, although some of the small towns mentioned are omitted. The translator did a good job, other than misspelling "dialled" and hyphenating "no-one".

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The ending is a bit weak, although you could instead call it realistic. The only minus is the killer-goes-after-the-protagonist cliché; but eventually he changes his plan, so I guess that's okay too.

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Kewl New Words...

Only one. Bollard : a thick post on a wharf used for attaching mooring lines.

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Excerpts...

Wallander squatted by the low telephone stand. Next to the phone was the remote control for the TV. Wetterstedt could talk on the phone and watch TV at the same time, he thought. Just like me. We live in a world where people can't bear not to change channel and talk on the phone at the same time. (pg. 67)

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"I wonder what kind of summer it'll be this year," he said.

"My grandmother in Almhult predicts the weather," said Hoglund. "She says it's going to be long, hot and dry."

"Is she usually right?"

"Almost always."

"I think it'll be the opposite. Rainy and cold and crappy."

"Can you predict the weather too?"

"No." (pg. 219)

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"He might have another gun," Svedberg said. "He might try to take you hostage. I don't like this. (...) What does he want?"

"Maybe he's stupid enough to try and make a deal with us. People think Sweden is just like the United States." (pg. 411)

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It's best to be hunting insane killers in the autumn. In the summer give me a good old-fashioned bomber. (pg. 367)

Sidetracked is another solid effort by Henning Mankell. Wallander is still messed up - he gets the hots for a female vicar (it was the outfit), yet has trouble speaking on the phone to his current GF. At least he's no longer burnt out with the job.

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The killer has an amazing set of skills which strains the limits of believability. But it's not impossible, and his rationale for axing/scalping is interesting and plausible. Everything ties together nicely at the end, and once again Mankell adds some social commentary about life in Sweden. All in all, a good police procedural, worthy of the awards it garnered. 8 Stars.

Take Back Plenty - Colin Greenland

1990; 484 pages. Genre : Sci-Fi (Space Opera). New Author? : Yes. Laurels : Arthur C. Clarke, Eastercon, and British Sci-Fi Association Awards (all in 1990). Overall Rating : 8*/10.

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Okay. Start with the Star Wars scenario, but we're going to follow Han Solo & his spaceship instead of Luke & Leia. Now change Han's gender and ditch the Wookie. Limit the traveling world to our Solar System and let our hero have all the sex she wants. That pretty much sets the Take Back Plenty scene.

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Tabitha Jute is an astral barge-driver who's just trying to make ends meet and keep her ship running. When she's offered a tidy sum to take a performing troupe to Triton, it seems like easy money. But there wouldn't be a story if that turned out to be the case, would there?

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What's To Like...

The characters will keep you interested; the storyline will keep you guessing; and the action comes fast enough and often enough to keep you reading. Some of the Good Guys don't make it, and some of the Bad Guys do, and there's a lot of hat-changing along the way. And just who is narrating the tale?

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But it's the detailed descriptions of the various worlds that really sets TBP apart from classic science fiction. I love Andre Norton stories, but goodness, her worlds are paper-thin. If this is what defines the term "space opera" (and there is no consensus on that), then it's a welcome bit of genre evolution.

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OTOH, Take Back Plenty has explicit sex, drugs, the F-word, booze, and a sexual assault or two. If that's what "space opera" means, then it may not be to everyone's taste. Personally, I thought it worked here.

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Kewl New Words...

There were dozens of them. Purlieu : the outlying part of a city. Felucca : a swift, narrow sailing vessel. Superannuated : too old to be useful. Chapati : flat, pancake-like bread that's cooked on a grill. Gantry : a metal framework. Tenebrous : dark & gloomy. Perineum : well this is a family blog, so you'll have to google or wiki this. Ablute : a washroom. Caprine : goatlike. Coulisses : hallways. Carbuncular : resembling a sore. Fatuus : phosphorescent light. Psittacoid : birdlike. Purulent : pus-like. Crepuscular : dim. Profligate : recklessly wasteful. Viridian : a blue-green pigment. Libration : a slow oscillation of a satelite. Kipple : a collection of useless objects. Abattoir : a slaughterhouse. Ordure : solid, excretory product. Macrocephalic : having an exceptionally large head and brain. Collocutor : any person who is engaged in a conversation.

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Excerpts...

Carnival is Schiaparelli. The canals are thronged with tour buses, the bridges festooned with banners. Balloons escape and fireworks fly. The city seethes in the smoky red light. Though officers of the Eladeldi can be seen patrolling everywhere, pleasure is the only master. Shall we go to the Ruby Pool? To watch the glider duels over the al-Kazara? Or to the old city, where the cavernous ancient silos throb with the latest raga, and the wine of Astarte quickens the veins of the young and beautiful? A thousand smells, of sausages and sweat, phosphorus and patchouli, mingle promiscuously in the arcades. Glasses clash and cutlery clutters in the all-night cantinas where drunken revellers confuse the robot waiters and flee along the colonnades, their bills unpaid, their breath steaming in the thin and wintry air. (pg. 7. Is that a fantastic description, or what?!)

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The Capellans didn't prohibit research, not in so many words; they simply assured humankind that for them with their small brains, the mechanics of hyperspatial foreshortening would be incomprehensible. Those who persisted discovered the drives' disconcerting tendency to implode or deliquesce at the merest touch of a screwdriver. If you did manage to open one, it would turn out to be full of dead leaves. (pg. 62)

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God, you were a mess, Alice. Birds' nests in your aerials, bindweed in your undercarriage. The ground beneath you was sticky and black where all your oil had leaked away. The fog had got at you and rusted your compressor vanes and the airlock seals had all perished.

I fell in love with you the first time I saw you. (pg. 445)

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"Salami minestrone... there's whisky in the jar..." (pg. 83)

Take Back Plenty is a complex story that will keep you on your toes. Yet it's also a fun read. The ending is good, and leaves some loose ends with which to forge a sequel and a threequel. Which do exist if you can find them.

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My main question is why this book, which kicked butt in 1990 for British Sci-Fi awards, is now so little-remembered. There are only three reviews of it at Amazon, and only one at Amazon-UK. Methinks someone needs to get a new publishing company. 8 Stars.

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Trivia Teaser : Tabitha's ship is called the Alice Liddell, and is named for a real, historical person. Who was she? (Answer in the comments)

Curious Notions - Harry Turtledove

2004; 272 pages. Book #2 of the "Crosstime Traffic" series. New Author? : No. Genre : Alt-History, YA (kinda). Overall Rating : 4½*/10.

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In the late 21st century, our timeline learns how to dimension-hop into parallel wotlds. Which is good, because we are suffering from an acute food shortage. So we buy produce and grain in alternate timelines, while selling them technology that is outmoded to us (VCR's, cassette tape decks, etc.), but slightly more advanced than what they have.

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Lawrence Gomes and his teenage son, Paul, run one of the Crosstime buy/sell fronts in an alternate San Francisco, where Germany won WW1 and now rules the world, including the USA. But the Crosstime operation is put in jeopardy - indeed, the whole dimension-hopping process is at risk - when the German occupiers start wondering where this 2-bit family shop is getitng all of its amazing gadgets.

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What's To Like...

The whole idea of parallel worlds (but all at the same point in time) is a typical Turtledove brilliancy. He postulates that a new world is formed at every critical juncture in history. So there are hundreds of alternate universes out there.

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I found the storyline to be believable. There's more action in Curious Notions than there was in the first book, Gunpowder Empire, reviewed here. And although this #2 in a series that now has about 6 books, each one appears to be a stand-alone story.

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Turtledove also made this a G-Rated book. There are no drugs, sex, death, blood, gore, or cussing. The parents of the two teenage protagonists are called "Dad" and "Mom", and although we the readers can see love budding between the kids, there isn't so much as a peck on the cheek. Even the interrogation sessions are ridiculously clean. 'If you don't talk, I'm going to shine this really, really bright light in your eyes.'

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Kewl New Words...

Only one, and it's a bit of an inside joke. Fasarta. Good luck on finding it defined anywhere. It appears to be a nonsense techno-geeky word from Robert Heinlein's Door Into Summer. Harry Turtledove reportedly is a big fan of Heinlein's, and this is his way of giving Heinlein a tip of the old hat.

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Excerpts...

People in San Francisco sold anything that moved. If you stepped away from your shadow for a minute, they'd pry it off the sidewalk and try to sell it back to you. (pg. 27)

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"You would do well not to make the Kaiser's government suspect you," the big Feldgendarmie man said. "Next time, you may not be so lucky."

"But I didn't do anything," Lucy's father said.

"If you had not done anything, we would not have arrested you." The German sounded just as sure as if he'd said the sun would come up in the morning. "Just because we cannot prove it does not prove a thing." He also sounded sure he made sense. (pg. 70)

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...this wasn't his San Francisco. For the USA in this alternate, it was a first-rate city. But this USA was a second-rate country, and this San Francisco felt second-rate to him. The town he was used to bounced. This one ... lurched. (pg. 209)

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He was, in a word, bored. In two words, very bored. (pg. 209)

Turtledove wrote Curious Notions to be a YA novel, but I think it should be classified as "Juvenile Fiction". If you know a tweenager who likes Alternate History, this may be a great read for him. But if he's in 8th Grade or higher, he'll likely find this book too dumbed-down and repetitive. Adults should probably avoid this series entirely. 4½ Stars.

Still Life With Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

1980; 277 pages. New Author? : No. Genre : Modern Lit; Humor. Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

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Leigh-Cheri, the exiled and virginal Furstenberg-Barcalona princess, heads to Maui to attend Care Fest, where she hopes to learn all about ecology, meditation, vitamins, and UFO's. Instead, she crosses paths with outlaw-bomber Bernard Mickey Wrangle, who introduces her to Love. But the question is - how do you make Love last?

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What's To Like...

There's humor on every page. The storyline is great, and the ending doesn't disappoint. At its core, Still Life With Woodpecker is a romance, yet both male and female readers will find it appealing. And it does answer the primal question - how to make Love stay.

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The pacing is nice, but Robbins also finds time to go off on a slew of tangents, discussing a wide range of topics such as the difference between an outlaw and a criminal; the lost continent of Mu; how to make bombs from everyday components (Such as a deck of cards. Eat your heart out, McGyver!); an improved plotline to The Grapes of Wrath; the cosmological contrast between the Sun and the Moon; why redheads always seem so weird; and last but not least - the many mystical messages hidden on the cover of a pack of Camel cigarettes.

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Then there are the groan-inducing similes. Some examples : "teardrops bucked out of Leigh-Cheri's eyes like bronco amoebae leaving the chutes in a biology lab rodeo". Or "his lower lip quivered like a snail that had just learned the meaning of escargot." There are dozens more.

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Kewl New Words...

Fimbrillate : having small or tiny hinges. Fecundity : fertility. Renifleur : a person turned on or gratified by certain odors. Cromlech : a prehistoric monument consisting of monoliths encircling a (burial) mound. Sidereal : relating to stars or constellations.

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Excerpts...

His wife, the Queen, once the beauty of seven capitals, was understimulated and overweight. She had attended, in America, so many second-rate society teas, charity fashion shows, and gala this and gala thats, that she'd begun to exude a kind of paté de fois gras gas, and the expulsion of this effluvium propelled her from party to ball as if she were a sausage skin inflated by Wagner. (pg 5-6)

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The Furstenberg-Barcalona homeland was now ruled by a right-wing military junta, supported by the United States government and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church. While the U.S. publicly regretted that the junta permitted so few civil liberties, it was loath to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, particularly a nation that could be relied upon as an ally against those left-leaning nations in whose internal affairs the U.S. did regularly interfere. (pg. 7)

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That year, spring came to the Puget Sound country as it frequently does, like a bride's maid climbing a greased pole. After a gradual, precarious ascent, spring, in a triumph of frills and blooms and body heat, would seem ot have finally arrived, only to suddenly slide down into the mud again, leaving winter's wet flag flapping stiffly and singularly at the top of the seasonal staff. Then, girlish bosom heaving, spring would shinny slowly back up the pole. (pg. 148)

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"Outlaws are the can openers in the supermarket of life." (pg. 65)

Tom Robbins' style in Still Life With Woodpecker reminds me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut, with some Terry Pratchett humor added for flavor, and a dash of Charles Bukowski stirred in for spice. For me, this novel was funny, insightful, and interesting; all without taking itself too seriously. Its R-Rated portions may offend some; and others may tire of its tangents. I thought everything came together just fine.

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So if you are bummed because Vonnegut has passed on and there will never be a sequel to The Sirens of Titan, be of good cheer, and give this book a try. 9½ Stars.

Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman

2006; 355 pages. Full Title : Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. New Author? : No. Genre : Anthology; Fantasy. Awards : 2007 Locus Award for Best Collection. Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

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A collection of 31 Gaiman-penned short stories, poems and one novella, all of which were published previously. There are aliens and vampires, horror and humor, sock monkeys and Scheherazade, Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft. The latter are paired in a single story.

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What's To Like...

A slew of twisty tales from the fertile mind of Neil Gaiman. These aren't Gaiman rejects - four of the stories won Hugo or Locus Awards. Some are light-hearted, others dark. A few bordered on being lewd, which was a new side of Gaiman for me. The introductions to each one, containing background on why he wrote it, are really interesting.

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The Best of the Bunch...

October In The Chair - The 12 months meet to tell themed stories to each other, and tonight, October tells a ghost story. Beautifully done. My Life - A bit of prose written to accompany a picture of a sock monkey. A great example of Gaiman's storytelling skills. Feeders & Eaters - A cannibal romance. The Day The Saucers Came - Just how many things can go wrong on the day the world comes to an end? The Monarch of the Glen - A mini-sequel to American Gods, with Shadow going to Scotland.

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Kewl New Words...

Kedgeree : a dish of rice, hard-boiled eggs, and flaked fish. Guying (vb.) : making fun of. Foeter : a rotting mess (I think). Cachinnation : loud, convulsive laughter. Scatty : rattlebrained. Frottage : rubbing the body against another person for sexual gratification. Bowdlerize : to remove material from a book to make it less vulgar or offensive. Scumble : to soften the colors or outlines of something. Bifurcated : divided into two parts. Tachyon (adj.) : technically, of a hypothetical subatomic particle that travels faster than the speed of light. But here it was "tachyon swans". Tontine : a form of life insurance where, on the death of a participant, his share is destributed to the remaining members of the group. Bothy : a small, primitive hut out in the countryside, left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge.

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Excerpts...

"The brides!" came the whisper from beyond the door, and it redoubled and resounded until it seemed to her that the very house itself throbbed and echoed to the beat of those words - two syllables invested with longing, and with love, and with hunger.

Amelia bit her lip. "Aye. The brides. I will bring thee brides. I shall bring brides for all."

... And then one ghost voice hissed, "Yes, and do you think we could get her to throw in a side order of those little bread roll things?" (pg. 59-60)

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"I was never much of a one for cats," he said suddenly. "Not really. I liked dogs. Big, faithful things. You knew where you were with a dog. Not cats. Go off for days on end, you don't see them. When I was a lad, we had a cat, it was called Ginger. There was a family down the street, they had a cat they called Marmalade. Turned out it was the same cat, getting fed by all of us. Well, I mean. Sneaky little buggers. You can't trust them." (pg. 224-225)

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"We knew that it would soon be over, and so we put it all into a poem, to tell the universe who we were, and why we were here, and what we said and did and thought and dreamed and yearned for. We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable. Then we sent the poem as a pattern of flux, to wait in the heart of a star, beaming out its message in pulses and bursts and fuzzes across the electromagnetic spectrum, until the time when, on worlds a thousand sun systems distant, the pattern would be decoded and read, and it would become a poem once again." (pg. 266)

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But where does cantagion end and art begin? (pg. 267)

Like any anthology, Fragile Things has its gems and its paste, and two readers might disagree on which stories are which. Like all short stories, character development and plot depth are sacrificed for the sake of a quick-moving tale. It is no coincidence that the crown jewel here, The Monarch of the Glen, is also the longest story - 54 pages in length.

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Fragile Things won't supplant whatever is currently your favorite Gaiman book, and some of the "rawer" stories and language may not be to everyone's taste. This is definitely not a book for the kiddies. If you've never read a Gaiman book, don't start here. Yet every reader will find some of the stories to be really good, and for those Gaimaniacs among us, this is a worthy collection. 6½ Stars.

Pompeii - Robert Harris

2003; 346 pages. New Author? : No. Genres : Historical fiction, Mystery, Action. Overall Rating : 7*/10.

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The aqueduct-carried water at Misenum has gone bad - it's killing the fish and reeks of sulfur (sulfide, actually). Something has happened upstream and it's up to Attilius, the new aquarius (aqueduct engineer) to find it and fix it. Could it have anything to do with a smoldering Mt. Vesuvius? Probably not, since Pompeii, at the base of the volcano, reports that their water is just fine.

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What's To Like...

Our hero is an engineer, how kewl is that?! The co-star is a historical figure - Pliny the Elder - and to a certain degree, he steals the show. He's been a soldier and a statesman; he's still a scientist an admiral, and a writer. And he's about to lock horns with Mother Nature. Who will win?

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Best of all, Robert Harris gives you a wonderful "feel" for life in the ancient Roman Empire. From the water clocks and water organs to the home life and marketplaces, you really do get a sense of "being there". Even the anachronistic candles can be forgiven.

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You get a storyline with each genre. There is fun with aqueducts for the Historical Fiction. The mystery is what has happened to Exomnius, Attilius' predecessor, who vanished one day without a trace. And the action of course is Vesuvius herself. She's getting ready to blow. Harris deftly ties all these lines together for a coherent story.

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Kewl New Words...

Pergola : an arbor with a framework that supports climbing plants. Hypocaust : an ancient Roman system of central heating. Dyspeptic : morose. Centuriated : pertaining to a Roman practice of dividing up the countryside around a newly established colony into (100) square lots and giving them to the colonists. Demobbed : demobilized. Here : demobbed legionaires. Afflatus : the blowing on someone or something by air or other vapors.

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Excerpts...

Attilius had no time for gods. Boys with wings on their feet, women riding dolphins, graybeards hurling bolts of lightning off the tops of mountains in fits of temper - these were stories for children, not men. He placed faith instead in stones and water, and in the daily miracle that came from mixing two parts of slaked lime to five parts puteolanum - the local red sand - conjuring up a substance that would set underwater with a consistency harder than rock. (pg. 8)

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"Do you see that group of figures, reading in the shade beside the pool? They are philosophers." Torquatus found this very funny. "Some men breed birds as a pastime, others have dogs. The senator keeps philosophers!"

"And what species are these philosophers?"

"Followers of Epicurus. According to Cascus, they hold that man is mortal, the gods are indifferent to his fate, and therefore the only thing to do in life is enjoy oneself."

"I could have told him that for nothing." (pg. 91)

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Poor old Petronius. Too funny and stylish for his own good. In the end, Nero, suspecting his own imperial majesty was being subtly mocked, had eyed him for one last time through his emerald monocle and had ordered him to kill himself. But Petronius had succeeded in turning even that into a joke - opening his veins at the start of a dinner in his house at Cumae, then binding them to eat and to gossip with his friends, then opening them again, then binding them, and so on, as he gradually ebbed away. His last conscious act had been to break a fluorspar wine-dipper worth 300,000 sesterces, which the emperor had been expecting to inherit. That was style. That was taste. (pg 147)

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"May the gods protect us from an honest man." (pg. 209)

Pompeii is not Robert Harris' greatest book. (*) There are problems with each storyline/genre. The characters are 2-dimensional in the Aqueduct plotline. Attilius is pathetically good, and the two bad guys are pathetically evil. This would make it a good YA book, except that there is an obsession with genitalia throughout.

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The mystery of Epomnius is straightforward and dull. The action involving Mt. Vesuvius is great, but only gets going with 80 pages left. There is an exciting ending, but it is much too short. There's even some romance, but it's not well-developed at all.

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Still, as a piece of historical fiction, Pompeii is quite good. I enjoyed the Roman setting, the detailed science of Vesuvius erupting, and the biographical unfolding of Pliny's last days.

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Maybe Robert Harris reached these same conclusions, as presently he is working on Book 3 of a trilogy about Cicero. The first two books - Imperium (2006) and Conspirata (2009) are already out, but they haven't shown up at the used-book store yet. We'll give Pompeii 7 Stars - more if you're reading it for the History; less if you're reading it as a Mystery/Thriller.

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(*) : That would be Fatherland, a fantastic Alt-History thriller set in a world where Hitler won WW2. Highly recommended, and reviewed here.

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

2007; 722 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genre : Epic Fantasy. Awards : 2007 Quill Award - Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Book One of the Kingkiller Chronicle. Overall Rating : 8*/10.

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Once he was called Kvothe - meaning The Flame, The Thunder, The Kingkiller, The Arcane, and/or The Bloodless. Now he is simply Kote - a not-so-prosperous innkeeper in a backwater village. But the Chronicler wants to write his story, so that the legendary hero is not forgotten. And therein hangs a tale...

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What's To Like...

The Name of the Wind is the start of an epic. It's like A Song of Ice and Fire, but not as many characters to keep track of. It's like Wheel of Time, but purportedly will only be a trilogy. It's like Lord of the Rings, but there are no dwarves, elves, orcs, ents, or hobbits. But there are some evil critters, and the character of Kvothe is especially well-developed.

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The writing is good, and there's even some poems and songs in it. There is some gentle humor to boot. The magic system is original and interesting. It's less miraculous than Gandalfian wizardry, and therefore more believable.

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There's a lot of chemistry in it, which is always a plus for me. Oh yeah, and it reveals the seven words to make a woman love you. Which we'll kindly put in the comments of this review.

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There are two timelines. The present, with Kote telling his life history to the Chronicler. And the huge biographical backstory of Kvothe, which is only begun here. One of the sub-themes is drug-addiction, which seems to me to be a rare topic in fanstasy novels.

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Kewl New Words...

Sophist : a skilled debater; a scholar or thinker. Here : a wise guy. Sygaldry : magic involving sigils or glyphs. Mommet : a voodoo doll. Lanting : urinating. Prat : a stupid or foolish person. Verdigris : a greenish patina formed on copper, brass, or bronze surfaces, caused by prolonged exposure to the air or water.

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Excerpts...

Chronicler's face grew red. "I'd heard that Kvothe was fearless," he said hotly.

The innkeeper shrugged. "Only priests and fools are fearless, and I've never been on the best of terms with God." (pg. 47)

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But for most practical purposes Tarbean had two pieces: Waterside and Hillside. Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars, thieves, and whores. Hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors, politicians, and courtesans. (pg. 160)

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He made a frustrated gesture and sighed. "Have you ever heard the saying: 'One wife, you're happy, two and you're tired-'"

I nodded. "-three and they'll hate each other-"

"-four and they'll hate you," Threpe finished. (pg. 438)

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"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long time.

"But Dianne... Dianne is like a waterfall of spark pouring off a sharp iron edge that God is holding to the grindstone. You can't help but look, can't help but want it. You might even put your hand to it for a second. But you can't hold it. She'll break your heart..." (pg. 484)

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"Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts." (said to Kvothe)

"Metal rusts. Music lasts forever." (Kvothe's response)

This is a long book, and not a particularly quick read. And for an epic fantasy, there isn't a lot of action, especially during the "University years" in the backstory. TNOTW sets the table for Volumes 2 and 3, which aren't out yet. Will they have more action? Romance? Heartbreak? Fighting? Things that go bump in the night?

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We shall see. For now, we'll give Patrick Rothfuss' debut book 8 Stars. Subject to change depending how good/meh/bad the sequels are.

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Other Voices...

For Queen Bina's fine review of The Name of the Wind over at 5-Squared, see here.

Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett

2003; 389 pages. Book #28 of the Discworld series. New Author?: No. Genre : Fantasy, Humor. Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

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The pastime of the small kingdom of Borogravia is war. They're constantly fighting one or more of their neighbors. And if a country doesn't happen to abut on their borders, it's okay to fight them too.

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Polly Perks needs to find her brother, who is a footsoldier in the Borogravian army. But women aren't allowed to join up. So she cuts her hair, dons men's clothing, learns to spit, belch, and walk like a clod, and Voilà! "Polly' becomes "Oliver". She...er... He enlists, gets a spiffy uniform (see bookcover), and with a pair of strategically-placed rolled-up socks, the illusion is complete.

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She gets put into a small fighting group that includes an idealistic lieutenant, a jaded veteran sergeant, a vampire, a troll, an Igor, a religious visionary, and a cook who can make a passable meal out of anything. But they all have their secrets...

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What's To Like...

The characters in the Monstrous Regiment are fun to get to know as they interact under trying circumstances. The themes are good - War, Feminism, Religious Fanaticism. Pratchett even touches upon Gay Love, which is unusual for him.

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The story is slow-go for a while. Lots of marching around, and not a lot of action. Things pick up in the second half. Also, there is almost no Ankh-Morpork in this story. Sam Vimes and Angua are here, but it's little more than some cameo appearances.

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Kewl New Words...

Eructation : belching, burping, farting, and the like. Guttering : Flickering and dying. Here: a candle's flame. Palliasse : a mattress filled with sawdust, straw, etc. Gabble (vb) : to speak rapidly; to jabber or chatter. Nood : alt. spelling for "nude". Coppice : a dense growth of bushes.

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Excerpts...

There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too big. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn't be fighting them, eh? There was always a war. (pg. 6)

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"We have a great respect for life, Polly," said Igorina solemnly. "It's easy to kill thomeone, and almost impossible to bring them back again."

"Almost?"

"Well, if you don't have a really good lightning rod. And even if you have, they're never quite the same. Cutlery tends to stick to them." (pg. 206)

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"There's a grill in the ceiling," said Shufti.

"Not big enough to climb through," said Polly.

"No, but we can hang ourselves before they do."

"I'm told it's a very painful way to die," said Polly.

"Who by?" said Tonker. (pg. 323)

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That's the trouble about the good guys and the bad guys! They're all guys! (pg. 327)

Monstrous Regiment doesn't have as many yuk-yuks as most Discworld books. That's not necessarily a bad thing. If you want to see Terry Pratchett present, say, the subject of war with a bunch of jokes and one-liners, I recommend Jingo.

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Instead, you get to see him use a subtler shade of humor here. For example, one of the Regiment "talks" to her god daily. This is usually an easy target for lampooning. Here, Pratchett makes you wonder if there might be something to it.

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Monstrous Regiment is a good book, but not Pratchett at his finest. With a troll, a vampire, a zombie, a couple of army grunts, and a bunch of new recruits all thrown together, I was expecting a bit more zaniness. 7½ stars.

Women - Charles Bukowski

1978; 291 pages. New Author? : No. Genre : Fictional Autobiography. Overall Rating : 5*/10.

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Charles Bukowski (via his alter ego, Henry Chinaski) wants you to know that even when he's 50 years old, ugly, and his gut is hanging over his belt; because he's a celebrated poet, beautiful women half his age line up at the door to go to bed with him. Nyah, nyah, nyah.

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And that the reason he treats them all like dirt is because, before he became famous (his teens, 20's, and 30's), these same women wouldn't give him the time of day. And that the reason he never falls in love with any of them is because he was unloved as a child. Charles Bukowski also wants you to know he's a male chauvinist pig.

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What's To Like...

The book lives up to its name and Bukowski's reputation. There are bunches of women and bunches of sex. There is booze on every page. There are nine bouts of vomiting, eight of which are by Buko. Yes, I counted them.

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The girls who rolled in the hay with our studly geezer deserve mention. So there's Lydia, Lilly, Valerie, April, Dee Dee, Nicole, Mindy, Laura, Joanna, Tammie, Mercedes, Cecelia, Liza, Gertrude, Hilda, Cassie, Debra, Tessie, Sara, Iris, Valencia, Tanya, and an unnamed Hispanic hooker. That's a new partner every dozen pages or so.

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If you muck through all the raunch, there is a lot of insight here as well. And when he isn't drunk, hungover, angry or stoned; Bukowski really is a talented writer. His favorite musician is Randy Newman, and that's worth half a star. And the kewl drawing on the bookcover was done by Bukowski himself.

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Kewl New Words...

None. Bukowski is the poet of the proletariat. They don't need no high-falootin' words.

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Excerpts...

Glendoline picked up a chair and started talking. She could talk. If she was a sphinx she could have talked, if she was a stone she could have talked. I wondered when she'd get tired and leave. Even after I stopped listening it was like being battered with tiny pingpong balls. (pg. 12)

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There is a problem with writers. If what a writer wrote was published and sold many, many copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold a medium number of copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold very few copies, the writer thought he was great. If what the writer wrote never was published and he didn't have the money to publish it himself, then he thought he was truly great. (pg. 140)

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Cecelia wanted to go for a constitutional around 2 PM. We walked through the court. She noticed the poinsettias. She walked right up to a bush and stuck her face in the flowers, caressing them with her fingers.

"Oh, they're so beautiful!"

"They're dying, Cecelia. Can't you see how shriveled they are? The smog is killing them."

We walked along under the palms.

"And there are birds everywhere! Hundreds of birds, Hank!"

"And dozen of cats." (pg. 175)

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Love (is) for guitar players, Catholics and chess freaks. (pg. 249)

One gets the impression Bukowksi is prone to exaggeration in Women. Which he is allowed to do, since he makes it clear this is a novel. Each time after he beds one of the women, they get all clingy and he has to dump them. Yeah right.

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People either love or hate Bukowski's works, and this book is no exception. The best I can say is, if "Letters To Hustler Magazine" is your kind of prose, then you will find Women to be fantastic. For everyone else, keep in mind that there are some very good parts here, if you dig deep enough. Just remember to wash your hands when you're done. 5 Stars.

The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse - Robert Rankin

2002; 342 pages. New Author? : No. Awards : SFX Book of the Year (2003). Genre : Humor; Fantasy. Overall Rating : 8*/10.

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13-year-old Jack comes to Toy City seeking to make his fortune. He meets Eddie Bear (a teddy bear), who is looking for a new detective partner, since his old one, Bill Winkie, has disappeared.

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Toy City needs their help because someone is methodically and maniacally killing the "old rich" nursery rhyme characters (more correctly called "Preadolescent Poetic Personalities") . Humpty Dumpty has been poached in his magniloquent swimming pool. Little Boy blue has been skewered on his own shepherd's crook. Then there are those ubiquitous chocolate bunnies...

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What's To Like...

Robert Rankin has created a fascinating world in Toy City. There are toon-sized bars, bawdy bordellos, the revered-but-clueless Toy Maker, and Missy Muffet's popular talk show, "Tuffet". The stars of the book are Jack and Eddie, but the other characters are fun to meet too. Among them are Mother Goose (she prefers to be called 'Madame Goose'), Rhymey Frog, Tinto the barman, and Wibbly, who's one of those sock 'em toys you used to have, bottom-weighted so it always bounced back up.

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Half the fun of a Robert Rankin book is the wordplay. There are running gags, puns, and understated humor. This makes for a lot of chuckles, but he also manages to take some pokes at some serious subjects, such as capital punishment, religious denominations, and conspiracy theories.

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Eddie habitually never completes his similes. He's as crazy as. Each chapter ends with a hook, and literary devices, such as a macguffin (here spelled "maguffin") abound. The book ends with a series of twists that keep you guessing.

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Kewl New Words...

Gormster : a low-level slang term for someone who's an idiot. Iconoclast : one who seeks to overthrow popular ideas or institutions. Winkling : extracting or prying something out from a place or a position. Conurbation : a predominantly urban area, but also including adjacent towns, suburbs, etc. Magniloquent : lofty and extravagant in style. Caryatid : a supporting column in the form of a draped female figure. (Wiki it). Thuya : the wood of a sandarac tree.

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Excerpts...

The frabious grammeting of the lock against its keep was positively malagrous in its percundity. The greebing and snattering was starkly blark.

And as for the spondabulous carapany that the broken door made as it struck the vestibule floor...

... the word phnargacious is hardly sufficient.

Rapantaderely phnargacious would be more accurate. (pg. 72; an example of Rankin's wordplay)

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"Big Jack Black

Lived in a sack,

Lived in a sack did he.

He dined upon cripples,

And little boys' nipples,

Served upon toast for his tea." (pg. 86)

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Eddie placed the item before him upon the bar counter and poked at it with a paw. In terms of the looks of it, it was truly beyond description. But considering its size, or lack of it, its weight was unsurprising. "It looks like the Big M," he said. "The Maguffin. What do you think, Jack?"

"Looks like it to me," Jack agreed. (pg. 187, and as detailed of a description as you'll get of this object)

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"I love the smell of offal in the morning." (pg. 327)

The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse will inevitably get compared to Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy. I doubt either author cribbed off the other, but keep in mind Rankin's book (2002) preceded Fforde's (2006) by several years.

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THCBotA has some R-rated scenes that seemed ill-fitting. It also took about 70 pages to hit its stride, although once it did, it was a great read. I didn't find it quite as engaging as my previous Rankin book, Brightonomicon (reviewed here), but that's a later work by the author (2005), so maybe he keeps getting better with age. The sequel to THCBotA, The Toyminator, came out in 2006, and is on my TBR shelf. I'm looking forward to further adventures by Eddie and Jack. 8 Stars.

The Leper of St. Giles - Ellis Peters

1981; 199 pages. Genre : Murder Mystery. New Author? : Yes. No. Well, kinda. Book #5 (out of 20) in the Brother Cadfael series. Overall Rating : 8*/10.

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Huon de Domville and Iveta de Massard are about to get married. But it's an arranged affair - strictly a business deal for Huon, and an unhappy event for Iveta, who's in love with Joscelin Lucy, one of Huon's squires. Plus, Huon's old enough to be Iveta's father.

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Alas, Joscelin becomes an ex-squire when his feelings towards Iveta are brought to light. And he flees when accused of theft by Huon. So when the latter is found dead (by strangulation) on the morning of the wedding, guess who's the prime suspect?

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What's To Like...

Despite its brevity, there are several themes here - a love story (phbbbt!); a whodunit; and a social commentary on the plight of lepers. There's even a bit of humor, in the person of Brother Cadfael's assistant, the bumbling Brother Oswin.

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No one is completely evil here, not even Huon. And you can't tell who the killer is by who doesn't get along with Brother Cadfael; he's a monk and gets along with everybody. But, as with any good whodunit, you can pretty much deduce the malfeasant by paying attention to the clues. Still, there are twists at the end that will catch you by surprise.

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Kewl New Words...

Lots of 'em. Scrofulous : having a diseased appearance resembling scrofula. (Wiki it). Leat : a trench or ditch that conveys water to a mill wheel. Scamp (verb) : to perform hastily. Confutation : an act that proves a person or statement to be in error or false. Byre : a barn. Estampie : a medieval dance and musical form. (the musical form is still known, but the dance itself has been lost in history). Dortoir : a bedroom or dormitory in a monastery. Harebell : wild hyacinth. Cottar : a peasant farmer (who lives in a "cottage"). Bearlead : to lead about (I think). Assart : the act of clearing a forest for agricultural use. Supererogation : an effort above and beyond the call of duty. Pleached : interlaced branches or vines, making a hedge. Hobbledehoy : an awkward, adolescent boy (is that a kewl word, or what?!). Jongleur : a folk singer; a wandering minstrel. Virago : a noisy, scolding, domineering woman. Rouncey : an ordinary, all-purpose horse.

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Excerpts...

There were always new ones, the wanderers who made their way the length of the land from lazarhouse to lazarhouse, or settled for a while in some hermitage on the charity of a patron, before moving on to new solitudes. Some went on crutches, or leaned hard on staves, having feet maimed by the rot of disease or painful with ulcers. One or two pushed themselves along on little wheeled carts. One hunched shapeless against the fence, bloated with sores and hiding a disfigured face within his cowl. Several, though active, went with veiled faces, only the eyes uncovered. (pg. 5, describing a leper house)

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He has seen battles, too, in his time in the world, as far afield as Acre and Ascalon and Jerusalem in the first Crusade, and witnessed deaths crueller than disease, and heathen kinder than Christians, and he knew of leprosies of the heart and ulcers of the soul worse than any of these he poulticed and lanced with his herbal medicines. (pg. 5)

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All you need is love...

Ellis Peters is the pen name that Edith Pargeter used when she wrote whodunits instead of historical novels. I've read one of the latter, reviewed here. Her murder-mysteries border on being cozies - the killing happens off-stage, and there is little or no blood. The trail of the crime here is not particularly convoluted, but it will keep you on your toes.

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Beyond the story, Peters/Pargeter excels in painting a vivid picture of living in England in 1139 AD. It was a hard life, especially if you were a peasant, a woman, or a leper. Yet it was not a complete misery; there were feast days and wedding celebrations, hunting lodges to relax at, and the protective influence of the church.

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The author also gives you some non-stereotypical views on justice, Muslim-Christian relations, and the vocation of being a mistress. These may or may not be historically accurate, but they make for some thoughtful reading. And in the end, true love overcomes all. But you knew it would now, didn't you? 8 Stars.

The Book of Ash, Volume 1 - Mary Gentle

1999; 424 pages. New Author? : Yes. Full Title : A Secret History, The Book of Ash, #1. Genres : Alt-History, Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction, Fantasy. Overall Rating : 8½/10.

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Europe in the mid-15th century is a turmoil-embroiled, crappy place to live. A hodgepodge of small kingdoms and duchies vie for power, and mercenary armies roam the countryside looking for employment.

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One of the mercenary bands is led by Ash. Now in her late teens, she killed her first two men (with just cause) when she was eight. Guided by a voice in her head, she excels in battle tactics. It is challenging to keep her army fed and paid, yet so far she's managed to do it. But there is a great dark force surging northward out of Africa, the like of which Europe has never before seen.

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What's To Like...

There are two storylines here - one in the present; the other in the 1470's. The present-day one is given as a series of e-mails between a historian and his publisher. He is in the process of translating a newly-discovered manuscript about Ash, and the 1470's timeline is in effect his translation. This allows Gentle to use some modern, anachronistic words, especially when it comes to cussing.

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The first quarter of the book is historical fiction, and is well done. You can feel the grit and grime, and see the soldiers in their armor, which they have to work at constantly to keep it from rusting. However, around page 135, golems and dwarves and Visigoths show up, and you realize you're not in Kansas anymore. It's a different world, one where Carthage is still a force, and Mithraism exists right alongside Christianity.

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There is a lot of cussing, and some savagery and ravagery. The coarse language seemed a bit strange coming from a female author, and some readers found it off-putting. Personally, I thought it enhanced the realism.

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Kewl New Words...

I'm skipping a bunch of technical terms about armor, etc. Gormless : lacking intelligence. Farrago : a motley assortment of things. Bolshie : radical, left-wing (here, an anachronism). Chine : a ridge or crest. Wattle : sticks and poles intertwined with twigs and branches, and used for walls and fences. Frowsty : musty, stale-smelling. Fug : a smoky, smelly atmosphere. Chiaroscuro : an artistic effect characterized by strong, light & dark contrasts of a single color. (Wiki it). Pantler : a servant in charge of the pantry of a large household. Dagged : having a pointed flap along the edge of a medieval garment. Attainted : disgraced, having a stigma (a legal term).

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Excerpts...

Godfrey must have read something of this on her face. He said to Constanza del Guiz, "Sorry to be so unkempt, my lady. I've been riding from Neuss. Captain Ash's men need her advice on several things, quite urgently."

"Oh." The old woman's surprise was frank and genuine. "Do they need her? I thought she was a figurehead for them. I would have imagined that a band of soldiers functions more smoothly when women are not there."

Ash opened her mouth and the younger serving women whipped a light linen veil over her face.

Godfrey Maximillian looked up from inadvertently shaking his muddy cloak over the tailor's bales of cloth. "Soldiers don't function with a figurehead in charge, my lady. Certainly they don't raise over a thousand men successfully for three years running and have most of the German principalities bidding for their services." (pg. 85)

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"The heavens are out of order..." Godfrey Maximillian did not stop pacing. There was a book in his hands, illuminated in red and blue; Ash might have made the text out with enough time to spell it letter by letter; he paused by one of the candles and flicked from page to page with a rapidity that both impressed her and filled her with contempt for a man who had no better use for his time than to learn to read. He did not even read aloud. (pgs. 231-232)

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Don't count your castles before they're stormed. (pg. 249)

This is Book 1 in a 4-part series. It was originally published in the UK as a mammoth 1,133-page single volume. Apparently the publishers think we Americans suffer from ADD. That's ridicu... oh look! A spider!

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Now where was I? Oh yeah. I found this to be a great start to a monumental story. It's only problem was that the book ended abruptly, which I presume is due to the US publishers breaking up the huge, single story into four equal parts. If you like the genres listed above, and if you're okay with some cusswords and coarseness (Make lust! Not love!), you will find this to be a good read. 8½ stars.

Riotous Assembly - Tom Sharpe

1971; 249 pages. Genre : Fiction; Satire. New Author? : Yes. Overall Rating : 9*/10.

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"I have just murdered my Zulu cook." With that simple, unambiguous statement, Miss Hazelstone of Jacaranda Park initiates an incredible and zany chain of events that will see 21¼ human fatalities (not to mention a couple animals), a bush that thinks it's Rambo, an obsessed Doberman named Toby, a full-scale police assault, a death sentence with a hanging, and a rubber fetish seduction session. Let mayhem run rampant!

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What's To Like...

Riotous Assembly is a clever and unlikely pairing of slapstick comedy with the horrors and brutality of South African apartheid. The Piemburg police come off as Keystone Kops, but you also get a chilling glimpse into how the minds of the white ruling class worked, with their de-humanizing attitudes towards the blacks. Sharpe also enlightens you about some of the hate-inspired laws used in that era - the Immorality Act, the Terrorism Act, and last but not least, the Riotous Assembly Act.

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The humor is laugh-out-loud funny. The action is non-stop. The characters, if not terribly deep, are fun to follow, even the bad guys. There is some cussing, some killing and violence, and some "adult situations". But thankfully, no romance.

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Kewl New Words...

Faience : a moderate to strong greenish blue color. Durbah : a court of a native ruler. Indaba : a council of indigenous people of Southern Africa called to discuss some important matter. Antimacassar : a protective cloth covering for the backs of chairs and sofas. Perspicacity : shrewd discernment, perception, or understanding. Impetigo : a highly contagious bacterial skin infection. Catarrh : inflammation of the mucous membranes in the nose and throat. Abattoir : a slaughterhouse.

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Excerpts...

...Luitenant Verkramp's efforts to find any saboteurs or Communists in Piemburg to try the (Electrical Therapy Machine) gadget out on had failed so hopelessly that Els had finally had to arrest a native boy he had caught early one morning with a bottle of milk in his hand. The fact that Els knew him to be the milk delivery boy hadn't prevented the Konstabel proving the efficacy of electric shock therapy and after five minutes treatment the boy readily confessed that he had stolen the milk, while after ten minutes he admitted administering poisoned milk to fifty European households that very morning. When Els proposed transferring the terminal from the boy's toe to his penis, the suspect admitted to being a member of the Communist Party and agreed that he had been trained in milk sabotage in Peking. (pg. 9-10)

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"You say here," continued the Kommandant, tapping the report, "that the Hazelstones are noted for their left-wing and communistic leanings. I would like to know what made you say that."

"Everybody knows they are Marxists," said Verkramp.

"I don't," said the Kommandant, "and I would like to know why you do."

"Well, for one thing Miss Hazlestone's nephew is at the university."

"Doesn't make him a Commie."

"He believes in evolution." (pg. 154-155)

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"I believe it had a pedigree," the Bishop told them.

"What's a pedigree?" Els asked.

"A family tree," said the Bishop, wondering if killing the dog was going to be added to the list of crimes he was supposed to have committed.

"Fussy sort of dog, having a family tree," Els said to the warder, "you'd think it would pee against lamp-posts like any other dogs." (pg. 164)

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Entropy made man (pg. 176)

Tom Sharpe is an English author, born in 1928. He emigrated to South Africa in 1951 to teach and do social work; and managed to get himself deported for sedition in 1961. Riotous Assembly was his first novel, and gives you a good idea why the white South African government kicked him out.

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Combining witty satire with ugly racism seems to be an ill-advised strategy, but it works beautifully here. If you want to be amused and educated at the same time, this is the book for you. 9 Stars.

Time Traders - Andre Norton

2000 (this "Omnibus" edition); 438 pages. Genre : 50's Sci Fi. New Author? : No. See here. Overall Rating : 6*/10.

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This is a bundling of two Andre Norton books - Time Traders (1958) and its sequel Galactic Derelict (1959). Both books are set in the near future, when both Russia and the USA have discovered time-travel. But Russia has several additional technological wonders, and it is theorized that someone or something in the past is giving them those marvels. So newbies Ross Murdock (TT) and Travis Fox (GD) sign on with a spec ops team to journey back into the past to find this ancient source of secrets and "take it down".

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What's To Like...

Norton sets you down in some cool historical places, such as Bronze Age northern Europe and Ice Age southwestern USA. There are cool people, such as Beaker Traders, Ax people, Folsom hunters, and long-gone animals such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. And there are some not-so-friendly aliens that take exception to us savages making off with their property.

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The action starts off fast, and all chapters end with a "hook" to keep you turning the pages. There's not a lot of depth of character. Instead, Norton focuses on making the settings come alive. That's true even of the futuristic places, and she heightens the realism by inventing some neat things like "healing jelly" and a "home photo" gizmo which reads the viewer's mind an shows whatever individual images he has of home.

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There is no sex, booze, or drugs in these stories, so they're safe for the kiddies. There is some killing, but without the gore. The background setting - the cold war between Russia and the USA - is somewhat dated, and it appears that a couple sections of the book were given "updates" in 2000, such as the inclusion of a computer-generated role-playing game.

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Kewl New Words...

Welter : a confused mass; a jumble. Fetor : an offensive odor. Brindled : brown or grayish in color, with darker streaks or spots. Inimical : unfriendly. Snaffled : seized quickly and easily.

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Excerpts...

"The Greeks built in stone, wrote their books, kept their history to bequeath it to their successors, and so did the Romans. And on this side of the ocean the Incas, the Mayas, the unknown races before them, and the Aztecs of Mexico all built in stone and worked in metal. And stone and metal survive. But what if there had been an early people who used plastics and brittle alloys, who had no desire to build permanent buildings, whose tools and artifacts were meant to wear out quickly, perhaps for economic reasons? What would they leave us - considering, perhaps, that an ice age had intervened between their time and ours, with glaciers to grind into dust what little they did possess?" (pg. 45)

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They had not even scratched the surface of was to be found in this ancient port. Had the jungle-cloaked city been the capital of some galaxy-wide empire, as Ashe suspected? They had no time to explore very far. Yes, there would be a return - sometime. And men from his world would search and speculate, and learn, and guess - perhaps wrongly. Then, after a while there again would be a new city rising somewhere - maybe on his own world - which would serve as a storehouse of knowledge gained from star to star. Time would pass, and that city, too, would die. Until some representative of a race yet unborn would come to search and speculate - and guess. (pg. 413)

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When you give up a belief in luck, you're licked! (pg. 402)

There is nothing epic about Andre Norton stories, but they do keep the action going on a local level, and capture bygone and alien eras quite nicely. The fate of empires might not hang in the balance, but what does transpire seems close to what would really happen the first time we step into the past or onto an alien world light years away from here.

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Norton's stories show their age, yet in some ways she was quite ahead of her time. The Apache Indians are presented in a favorable light, which is rare. We Americans may be better than them dirty Russkies, but the human race as a whole is cosmologically unimpressive. Her heroes tend to be loners, not squeaky-clean boy scouts.

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I loved Andre Norton's stories as kid; and still find them fun to read on an occasional basis. But Science Fiction has evolved significantly since its heyday in the 50's. Without that nostalgic tie-in, readers may find her books a bit "meh". 6 Stars.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

2005; 644 pages. New Author?: Yes. Awards : 2006 Glass Key Award, 2008 Boeke Prize, 2009 Galaxy British Book Award, 2009 Anthony Award (Best First Novel). Genre : Crime Mystery. Overall Rating : 8*/10.

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Mikhael Blomkvist has had better times. He's just been convicted of libel against a powerful Swedish industrialist. The scandal has caused him to resign his journalism job and he has a 6-month prison stint to look forward to.

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So when an elderly gentleman, Henrik Vanger, offers him a year's salary to simply re-read the police reports about the murder of Henrik's niece 36 years earlier (to see if he can uncover any new angles), it's an opportunity he can't turn down.

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What's To Like...

There's the complex character of Lisbeth Salander (the girl with the dragon tattoo), a semi-autistic hacker with a photographic memory. You do not want to do her wrong. It takes half the book for her to join up with Blomkvist in the investigation, but she brings valuable skills to the project.

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The style is part police procedural, so you get red herrings and dead ends. But it's also part action story, so you get shootings, fights, sex, and a puzzle to solve. Blomkvist is a journalist who isn't even burnt-out, which is a nice change of pace.

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It's set in Sweden, which is always a plus for me. And it's a page-turner, which is important when a book's 640+ pages long.

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Larsson gives a chart of the Vanger family tree in the front of the book, which you'll end up using frequently. But it would have been nice to also have a map of the island on which most of the story takes place. The plenitude of details adds realism to the story, but Larsson occasionally goes overboard with this device. One gets the feeling the manuscript needed a stern editor's pen at places.

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Kewl New Words...

Slussplan : a famous street in Stockholm. Scupper : to wait in ambush. Importunate : expressing earnest entreaty. Dogsbody : a worker who does all the unpleasant or boring jobs. Exiguous : very meager. Christmas Glogg : a Scandinavian punch that contains (at least in one recipe) red wine, sherry, brandy, almonds, raisins, and orange peel. (Yum, yum!) Gallimaufry : a jumble; a hodgepodge. Contretemps : an inopportune happening causing confusion or the disruption of the normal routine. Antipode : a polar opposite. Tunnelbana : the Stockholm subway system.

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Excerpts...

...it was not Lisbeth Salander's astonishing lack of emotional involvement that most upset him. Salander fitted into this picture about as well as a buffalo at a boat show. Armansky's star researcher was a pale, anorexic young woman who had hair as short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows. She had a wasp tattoo about an inch long on her neck, a tattooed loop around the biceps of her left arm and another around her left ankle. On those occasions when she had been wearing a tank top, Armansky also saw that she had a dragon tattoo on her left shoulder blade. She was a natural redhead, but she dyed her hair raven black. She looked as though she had just emerged from a week-long orgy with a gang of hard rockers. (pgs 40-41)

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Blomkvist put the photograph in his shoulder bag and walked to the park by the station. There he sat in a pavement café and ordered a latte. He suddenly felt shaken.

In English they call it "new evidence", which has a very different sound from the Swedish term, "new proof material." He had seen something entirely new, something no-one else had noticed in an investigation that had been marking time for thirty-seven years.

The problem was that he wasn't sure what value his new information had, if indeed it could have any at all. (pg. 326)

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Armageddon was yesterday - today we have a serious problem. (pg. 360)

(a slogan on one of Lisbeth's t-shirts)

The Swedish title of this book is Men Who Hate Women, which is more apropos, but admittedly a lot less catchy. The interwoven plotlines are complex and the book quickly sucks you in. It is easy to see why The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a smash bestseller. There are some technical flaws and some graphic sex scenes, but the engaging story more than compensates. Eight Stars.

The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

1963; 184 pages. Genre : Poetry. New Author?: Yes. Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

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Wilfred Owen was a decorated (Military Cross) British officer in World War 1. The horrors of trench warfare turned him into a conscientious objector, but he continued to serve in the British army. After being blown into the air by a mortar and landing in the remains of a fellow officer, he developed the stress disorder "shell shock", and was transferred back to England to convalesce.

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He was a blossoming poet who wrote about the horrors of war, so in 1918, he returned to active service in France because he felt it was necessary to be able to write accurately about the warfare. His life was tragically cut short at age 25, when he was shot in the head and killed exactly one week before the war ended. It is said that his mother received the news of his death as the church bells were being rung to proclaim the Armistice. You can read the Wikipedia article about him here.

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What's To Like...

TCPoWO is broken into three parts : 32 "War Poems"; 22 "Other Poems and Fragments"; and 25 "Minor Poems and Juvenilia".

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He is most famous for his War Poems, which vividly portray the mood of the soldiers in the WW1 trenches. His topics are things like poison gas, spring offensives, SIW (self-inflicted wounds), freezing in the winter, and of course, death. He lost his belief in God during the war, and developed a contempt for those who prospered from such conflict. In the introduction, C. Lewis writes, "we shall not fully understand the poetry of protest written by Owen, Sassoon and others, unless we realize how great was the gulf between the fighting man and the civilian at home, and between the front-line soldier and the brass-hat. To the soldier, those on the other side of the barbed wire were fellow sufferers; he felt less hostility towards them than towards the men and women who were profiting by the war, sheltered from it, or willfully ignorant of its realities."

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Besides the message, his poems are interesting for the various styles and structures he used. He was a master of word and meter. He used a number of rhyming schemes, including half-rhymes, and the rarely-seen consonantal end-rhymes. This latter device (rhyming words like "grained & ground" and "tall & toil") is what caused me to seek out his poems.

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Kewl New Words...

Execrable : deplorable; in very poor condition. Oblation : the act of offering something, such as worship. Glozed : glazed over. Infrangibly : unbreakably. Verger : a church official who keeps order during the service. Serried : crowded together. Malison : a curse. Hecatomb : a large sacrifice to a deity. Acropole : the French word for 'Acropolis'.

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Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

(It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country)

"Dulce Et Decorum Est" is the title of what is probably Owen's most famous poem, and he calls that phrase simply "The old Lie". His War Poems are powerful works (a few excerpts are given below), and will set you smack dab in the muddy, bloody World War One trenches.

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The other two sections are good, but less spectacular. Owen greatly admired John Keats, and he has a tendency at times to get Miltonesquely flowery with his poetry. The Juvenilia section are from his early, pre-war days; and are, unsurprisingly, uneven. But they show him experimenting with style and structure, and some are quite interesting.

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The War Poems are 10 Stars. The rest are 7 Stars. We'll average them out and give The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen 8½ stars. One mourns for the loss of his life at such an early age, and we can only wonder how many memorable poems were lost because he didn't live to a ripe old age.

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Excerpts...

Gas! Gas! Quick boys - An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."

(from Dulce Et Decorum Est)

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It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting stressful hands as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,

By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell.

(from Strange Meeting, and a fine example of consonantal rhyme)

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Has your soul sipped

Of the sweetness of all sweets?

Has it well supped

But yet hungers and sweats?

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I have been witness

Of a strange sweetness,

All fancy surpassing

Past all supposing.

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Passing the rays

Of the rubies of morning,

Of the soft rise

Of the moon; or the meaning

Known to the rose

Of her mystery and mourning.

(from Has Your Soul Sipped?)