Dusk Before the Dawn

My primer on John Carter (to go along with the earlier one on Doc Savage) has bee published on SFSignal.

An excerpt:

With Disney’s trailers and announced March release of the movie John Carter, readers of the books that inspired the movie are at once hopeful and fearful: hopeful that the movie will actually capture the imagination as well as the initial reading of Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series did; fearful that the movie will be an unfaithful adaptation, or, at worst a lemon in the tradition of pulp movie adaptations like the Doc Savage movie.

Though never a large Tarzan fan, I, like many readers my age, tore through the other worlds created by ERB. But Barsoom was always the cornerstone. Here, then, is a Primer on John Carter and the Barsoom series of novels.

SPOILER ALERTS – for those readers who have not read the books and would like to be surprised at the movie plot (which hopefully doesn’t stray to far from the book plot line), this primer is written with the potential spoiler pieces at the end. Feel free to read the Author section. The John Carter section contains a bit of preview, but stay away from the sections below that if you want to go into the movie fresh.

Born September 1, 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs held numerous non-writing jobs before breaking into the world of print in 1912 (at the tender age of 37). He is better know as the creator of Tarzan, but he also created many other worlds and characters. And the very first one he created was called “Under the Moons of Mars,” the original name of the story that would be known as A Princess of Mars, the first novel in the Barsoom/John Carter series.

The legend of ERB says that he held a job checking the advertisements in the pulp magazines of the day, and dreamed that he could write on better. This first attempt was one crazy daydream, and contained a fairly fully conceived world within it.

When initially submitting the story to The All Story magazine for publication, he was concerned that its plot was so fantastic that publishers and the public of 1912 would think him quite mad. So he submitted it under the pen name “Normal Bean”. The publisher presumably thought this was a typo and changed the author’s name to Norman Bean. Thus Barsoom and John Carter were born.

ERB created many more worlds and characters than just Tarzan and the Barsoom of John Carter. He imagined the adventures of David Innes in Pellucidar At the Earth’s Core; Carson(Napier) of Venus; The Land That Time Forgot trilogy; the Moon Maid and others. And the success he had with these inspired the pulp writers of Doc Savage and The Spider, who themselves inspired the science fiction writers that we all know and love.

In all, through 1967 with the release of I Am A Barbarian, ERB published almost 70 books of these worlds and others.

In his later years, ERB spent time in Hawaii, and was living in Honolulu during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He volunteered to be a war correspondent, and was the oldest one in the Pacific Theater. He died in 1950.

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The rest of the article covers John Carter, Barsoom, the rest of the books in the series and a link to other sources.

Read the full article here.

My review of READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline has been posted on SFSignal.

An excerpt:

REVIEW SUMMARY: A fast-paced story in a bleak future, where escape into virtual worlds is driven by a contest based on 1980s trivia and culture and the winner gets billions.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Wade Watts hides from the nasty real world of the mid-21st century inside the virtual world/MMORPG called OASIS. Like many, he searches for the clues that will grant the solver the fortune left by the will of the founder of OASIS. When he is the first one to solve the first of three main puzzles, the real world and the virtual starts in hot pursuit.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Any book that ties in Rush, Zork, Monty Python and other relics from my past into a Second Life meets World of Warcraft virtual reality gets my vote.
CONS: A made-for-Disney-movie ending; if you don’t like 1980s trivia and culture, you may not dig this book (if it’s too loud, you’re too young)
BOTTOM LINE: With a high geek and 80s factor, this book won’t appeal to everyone. But Cline lays down a well paced-plot with some good twists, and doesn’t spend too much time buried in the minutia of 80s trivia, making this an enjoyable read.

I do not propose to trivialize any book with an outline, but let’s do a quick plot summary exercise:

• Guy builds virtual reality, combination of Second Life/World of Warcraft/(insert name of fave MMPORPG here); guy makes billions;
• World has energy crisis meltdown;
• People get poor, depressed, escape into virtual reality.

So far, sounds like lots of other books and movies, don’t it? Tron, Surrogates and many others come to mind (and while we are talking Surrogates, can we all just agree that any SF movie Bruce Willis is in rocks?).

Author Ernest Cline adds the following twists to this well used base plot:

• Guy who built virtual reality dies. But his last email to all users of this world, he describes a contest in which the winner will get all of his billions;
• Contest is built on 1980s trivia, and involves finding three keys;
• People get excited, dive into virtual reality world;
• Corporations are formed, just to get expertise and win the prize;
• Little guys versus big guys, in reality and in the game.

Read the full review here.

Originally published in 1997, The Sparrow combines some of mankind’s most basic questions into an interesting story:

• Are humans the only species in the Universe? And if we find another species, how do we approach them?
• From Anne, in the story: “What sticks in my throat is that God gets the credit but never the blame. I just can’t swallow that kind of theological candy.” In other words, if God is responsible for the good times, is He responsible for the bad?

Both of these themes thread through the novel, told in flashbacks and first hand narative. The answer to the first question is unique: without consulting any other Earth organization, the Jesuits launch a mission, just as they have launched missions to remote and unknown places at different times in their history. This is a unique angle in the sci-fi “meet the new aliens” genre.

The second theme is the strongest, and centers on Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz, who sees the hand of God in the “coincidences” leading up to the mission, and the first part of the mission itself…but has lost his faith by the time of his return.

Emilio Sandoz is the only survivor from a Jesuit sponsored trip to the planet of Rekhat. Originally the inspiration and the spiritual leader of the mission, he is blamed, and basically put on inquisition, for the heinous crimes he is thought to have committed. The discovery of the alien race (through transmissions of their singing) and the mission to visit them, told in flashbacks, seems pre-ordained, particularly to Sandoz, a survivor from the rough part of San Juan, Puerto Rico, who went on to become a Jesuit priest. When a young friend of Sandoz, Jimmy, hears the alien singing while working at the Acerbo dish, and the first people he calls are Sandoz, his friends Anne and George (she a doctor, he an engineer, both friends of Sandoz and pulled to San Juan by him) and Sofia Mendes, an indentured servant/savant whose specialty is AI programming (she had already developed a linguistic program by questioning Sandoz, and was doing the same with Jimmy and his ET Searches). Emilio sees the gathering of these folks as divine, as the right team to go to the planet, on the other side of Alpha Centauri, in private while the United Nations debates endlessly on what to do.

After a while it became hard to ignore how, against odds, the dice kept coming up in favor of the mission. The crew members went on with their training, their work unaffected by the waxing and waning of confidence, but they all experienced varying degrees of amazement. Even the Jesuits were divided. Marc Robichaux and Emilio Sandoz smiled and said “See? Deus vult,” while D. W. Yarbrough and Andrej Jelacic shook their heads in wonder. George Edwrds and Jimmy Quinn and Sofia Mendes remained agnostics on the question of whether these events were minor miracles or major coincidences.

At first, the mission is divine. The team meets and Emilio builds communication with the alien Runa, and then the Jana’ata. But it goes incredibly and suddenly wrong with the team misunderstanding the cultures and relations of the two races, prompting the inquisition of Emilio as he returns to Earth as the sole survivor, questioning his own faith, blamed for the murder of his alien liason and possibly the deaths of the rest of the team.

The main drawback of the storyline is the suddenness and ferocity of the violence, which happens much too near the end of the story. With one or two clues that the carnivorous Jana’ata were agressive and violent (the main one being when Supaari attacked Emilio when first seeing him), the Earthlings discover too late in the game what they are really up against.

My review of A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin, the fifth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, has been published at SFSignal.com.

An excerpt:

REVIEW SUMMARY:An extremely well written, well paced book, with excellent characterizations where, like many “bridge books”, not much forward movement on the plot is achieved…well-worth the the read.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The fifth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series parallels the previous novel, following characters Tyrion Lannister (running into hiding after killing his father), Jon Snow (after the fight with the wildlings, determining how to stop the undead “Others”), Daenerys Targaryen, Arya Stark and others as they deal with dragons, the Others, multiple kings, politics and the lead up to the final show down between Ice and Fire (hopefully not too many thousand pages away).

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Continued awesomeness in the characterizations; the blending of the magical/fantasy aspects has them not overpowering the characters or the story; dragons and Daenerys; a few surprises (though, five books in, I almost put this aspect in the CONS list).
CONS: Unlike the first three books in the series but like many “bridge” books in the middle of a series, not a lot of forward plot movement; no summary at the beginning, and I’d rather rely on an author’s summary than random Wiki entries to refresh my old memory; one or two characters who seemed superfluous (Quentyn Martell???).
BOTTOM LINE: Though I kept wondering when a momentous event such as those that were in every chapter in the first three novels, I was a hundred pages on, and enjoying the prose. It’s GRRM, just read it!

George R.R. Martin’s fifth doorstop in the Song of Ice and Fire series, is, like its predecessors, extremely well written and full of fantastic and memorable characterizations. The fourth book, A Feast of Crows, runs in parallel for about the first 600 pages of A Dance With Dragons; but this new novel returns many of our favorite characters: Jon Snow, now Lord Commander of the Wall; Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of Meereen, freer of the slaves and stuck with her dragons, trying to determine how best to return to Westeros to vie for the Iron Throne; Arya Stark (though too briefly mentioned, IMHO), learning to be an assassin; Theon and Asha Greyjoy, sea warriors stuck on land, Theon tortured to become Reek, Asha trying to hold on to the castle at Deepwood Motte; and everyone’s favorite dwarf, Tyrion Lannister, running after killing his father and being smuggled out of town.

But this is the fifth book in what is rumored to be a seven book series. It is a bridge book; the characters grow, some change. But, unlike the first three books, where the plot pace was quick, wars were fought, main characters were killed off at a splendid pace…this novel explores the characters. Not much happens, except for one surprise I would not presume to reveal (small hint: it did lead me to a solid theory on who Jon Snow’s mother is).

My concern before investing my precious time in this 959 page hardback — I made the mistake of buying the hundred pound hardback to add to the similar first four novels causing a slight hernia carrying it on planes…should have bought the eBook — was that it would follow the path of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Series, which I stopped reading around the sixth or seventh book; those characters were slow to change and uninteresting, and new characters that were introduced five books in did not grab my attention. As Neil Gaiman so eloquently put it, GRRM is not my bitch…but I’m not his either. Reading a novel this large and a series that may go on another 2-3,000 pages is a large investment of time by a reader to an author.

My review of Jonathan Mayberry’s 3rd Joe Ledger book, The King of Plagues, has been posted on SFSignal.com. If you haven’t read the books, I strongly suggest reading them from the beginning; they are all “can’t put them down” reads (and I have to read them immediately or my son will steal the books out of my hand).

The Chronology of the series (with links to reviews or download locations):

• “Countdown“, a short story prequel;
• Patient Zero (linked to my interview with Maberry at SFSignal after this novel was released)
• The Dragon Factory
• “Material Winess”, the short story that bridges novels 2 and 3 (to get it, click here, sign up and it will be emailed to you
• The King of Plagues
• Assassin’s Code (4th novel, to be released in 2012)
• Unnamed 5th novel 

Volume 2 in the four volume Shadowmarch series.

As readers, we are lucky that Tad Williams backs the Golden State Warriors; for if he needed to spend more time backing a winning basketball team, he might spend less time writing engaging series like Shadowmarch (sorry, Tad).

As with his other series, Williams effortlessly mixes human politics, royalty and coming-of-age stories with magic entities, god and demigod rivalries. He doesn’t explain all (similar to his Otherland series, where some events still puzzle me) but keeps his readers wondering. Why is there an alliance between the Tollys and the Sulepis of Xis? How is Qinnitan related to Briony, Barrick and King Olin? What is the relationship between the Qar and the Eddons? Are they half-Qar and half-human? If this series is like others of Williams, some questions will be answered and others will be left to the reader…which is yet another reason to enjoy his work. It is a large investment of time to read a series this long, but Williams’ past series (Otherland, and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn) have proven well worth the investment.

Shadowplay is volume two in the series of four, and it starts with the twin rulers of Southmarch, Briony and Barrick Eddon separated and struggling. Southmarch, the northern most human city, is surrounded by an army of the Qar (the fairy folk) and in the hands of the Tollys, enemies of the Eddons. Barrick had gone north to battle the Qar army, and had been had a magic encounter with Queen Yasammez of the Qar. He begins wandering the Shadowlands, followed by Ferras Vansen, captain of the royal guard, sworn to Barrick’s sister Briony that he would protect him. They encounter and begin traveling with the fairy Gyir The Storm Lantern, who has an object he received from Queen Yasammez who got it from Flint (who may or may not be the son of Duchess Mer0lanna, the twins Great Aunt) and Chert, the Funderling (small folk who are good at digging and stonework and live under the castle).

Got that? (more…)

My review of Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie is up at SFSignal.

Excerpt:

Set in the world of Abercrombie’s The First Law series, Best Served Cold has no sorcery like that series, but does turn some magic in making a seemingly ordinary revenge story into multiple interesting character studies wrapped in a few bloody messes. I was certain I had figured out the plot and ending multiple times, only to be pleasantly surprised by unpredictable characters…and not by convenient out of character jumps. Now where did I put the third book in The First Law series?

General Monzacarro Mercatto, the Butcher of Caprile, the Snake of Talins, victor in many battles, returns with her brother Benna to the castle of Duke Orso, who wants to be King of Styria. In minutes, her brother is slain and she is left for dead, by a Duke who is worried that she is becoming more popular than he, and will try to take his throne. Nursed back to health by an unknown savior, Monza vows revenge against the Duke and the six (including his sons) who helped in the betrayal.

To achieve said revenge, Monza surrounds herself by a motely but interesting crew:

• Friendly, the counting convict;
• Morveer, the misunderstood poisoner, and Day, his ever-eating female apprentice, who may be getting better than the master;
• Caul Shivers, the Northman (who knows the Bloody-Nine from the series) come to Styria to make himself “a better man”. Shivers makes an appearance in Before They Are Hanged, book two of The First Law (and don’t tell me if he’s in book three, it’s in my reading pile!);
• Vitari, the female torturer, who is also in Before They Are Hanged;
• General Cosca, who led the Thousand Swords before Monza, and became a drunk, drowning his past;
• Monzacarro Mercatto (sounds like a race car), the victim and revenge seeker…or is it the other way around?

Read the entire review (with comments about The First Law series) here.

My review of The Kensei, the 5th Lawson vampire novel by Jon F. Merz, has been posted on SFSignal.com.

An excerpt:

When you mention vampire and sword in the same sentence, most people will think Blade or they talk about hacking away in frustration at the last Twilight DVD (apologies in advance to my wife for the Twilight digs). The so-called “Urban Fantasy” genre has be overdone to death (pun intended) with either too much romance bordering on porn or repetitious scenarios.

The Kensei is not Blade, it is certainly not Twilight. It is a excellently paced action thriller that happens to have a secret agent vampire as the main character. It is written in a realistic fashion, where if you took the vampire-esque pieces out, an excellently paced action thriller would still be in place. It is also the first book I have read in one sitting in a long long time.

I am the default SF Signal recipient for books with a martial arts slant and am always ready for a story with well written martial arts dialogue, tradition and scenes.

The Lawson series provides an interesting take on the vampire world that mixes in some Qigong / martial arts culture. The genesis of the vampire “race” is that while some stone age hunters drank the blood of their animal kills thinking to gain their strength, others drank the blood of their human kills.

From page 12 (of the Advance Reader copy):

“Over time, our bodies developed a means of distilling the life force energy - what they call ki in Japanese, chi in Chinese or even prana in the yogic traditions - from the blood we drank. The ingestion of this life force energy meant we lived longer and had above-average instincts and reflexes. We can see extremely well at night. And we have incredible powers of regeneration.”

Wood kills them, and the casual explanation hearkens back to the philosophy of balance with the elements: Earth, Water, Wood, Fire (some descriptions put in Air, some have four elements, some five, some eight to match trigrams and some thirteen for martial arts postures/directions). Wood balances out Earth, which is why wood (and wood by-products!) kill vampires like Lawson.

Though my son and I will sit through any (and I mean any) martial arts movie for enjoyment, to describe this in words in a realistic way is difficult. Real fights never come off as choreographed, but an author must do his best to describe the action, the reactions and the thought that goes into this and make it as realistic and entertaining as possible. Jonathan Maberry (with the Joe Ledger series) has been my favorite on doing this beforehand, but Jon Merz gives him a run for his money.

At the beginning of the year, I devoured (pun intended, Mark might get it) Mr. Chadbourn’s Age of Misrule trilogy. It is only fitting that I end the year with the start of the following trilogy, Kingdom of the Serpent, and the enjoyable romp through history that is the first book, Jack of Ravens. This book is not only a good vs. evil fantasy tale that chronicles the fight through history, but it imagines a world outside of our world, a (dare I say it) “Matrix” like veil, leaving you wondering which is real and which is fantasy. Chadbourn does an excellent job of weaving in historical figures into a timeline that asks the participants to bend their minds and look behind the veil.

And dragons! What more do you need?

The Age of Misrule series started with the world as it is today, a world of reason. Jack Churchill and the rest of the five of the Pendragon Spirit, rode the wave of chaos that spread as technology failed and a battle began with Fragile Creatures (us humans) initially serving as collateral damage…but in the end being the weight that tipped the scale.

Some spoilers for that first series after the break.

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How do you continue a series that has ended, without making it droll, repetitive, unimaginative? (See the twelfth SF Signal podcast for a discussion on series that have gone on too long).

You simply follow history, as with Rick Riordan’s new series The Heroes of Olympus, the follow-up to his excellent Percy Jackson series). The Percy Jackson series has the Greek Gods of Olympus being challenged by the Titans they dethroned long ago. This new series combines Roman mythology with another set of ancients (no spoilers) set on revenge against the gods, following the stories of mythology again. This book, like the first series, not only provides a great family read (we will all pass this book around) but really invests the reader into the tales of mythology in a greatly entertaining way.

The first book, The Lost Hero, starts where the Percy Jackson series ended, with Rachael Dare making her first prophecy:

Seven half-bloods shall answer the call.

To storm or fire, the world must fall

An oath to keep with a final breath,

And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.

The Lost Hero opens with Jason, Leo and Piper, three misfits at a camp for wayward kids who are obviously (if you read the first series) demi-gods.  But Jason has no memory of anything before that moment. (more…)