Mini Reviews: Trouble on Paradise, Eden, and Earth

We're still a couple of months out from Hallowe'en, but for this edition of the Mini Reviews, I've decided to post some thoughts on books that deal — to varying degrees — with monsters. Both the inhuman and the human kind.

Here's the lineup:

The Night Lies Bleeding by MD Lachlan
The Dinosaur Princess by Victor Milan
Daughter of Eden by Chris Beckett

The short version? These books are all awesome and you should buy and read them immediately.

Now for the longer (but still mini) reviews. As always: SPOILERS AHEAD. And if you don't like spoilers, you can just go back to working on that Yor: The Hunter from the Future fanzine you've been trying to put together for the last 35 years.


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The Night Lies Bleeding, by MD Lachlan

What could possibly be worse than the old Norse god/monster wolf Fenrir coming to Earth in human form to reincarnate again and again over the ages, each time transforming into a gigantic werewolf that chews through everyone around him like a chainsaw ripping through a box of baby bunnies? Nazis, of course.

In The Night Lies Bleeding, the final instalment in MD Lachlan's superbly unsettling Wolfsangel series, Fenrir's latest avatar is living as a British aristocrat and museum curator, trying to stay detached from humanity as the UK is hammered by the German Blitz in the Second World War. But there's a difference from his previous lives, one that's more important than his social status or wealth: Previously, as a Viking, a would-be Byzantine courtier, a priest, or someone caught up in the Norman Harrying of the North, he'd only lived a single lifetime (and generally not very long at that). He'd been confined and died after each transformation and rampage. This time, however, the avatar of the wolf, currently known as Endamon Craw, has been living the same life for a few hundred years — there was no death after the transformations of the recent centuries. And while Craw has been trying to lead a quiet life, to keep away from things that might make him lose control, he's now drawn back into the inescapable fate laid out by the Norns when he's brought in as a consultant on a police investigation into a series of mutilations and murders. It seems someone else is trying to use some of the ancient runes to become a werewolf himself. Every day Craw assists with the case, he's confronted with things that increasingly prod the wolf inside him, bringing it closer to waking. Meanwhile, in Germany, a lazy doctor who doesn't support the Nazis or the war submits a research proposal to the SS as a joke, only to have it taken seriously by the occult-crazed High Command. Dr Max Voller is ordered to report — with his wife, Gertie — to Wewelsburg, otherwise known as The Black Vatican, a castle where the SS carries out abominable experiments on concentration camp prisoners as it attempts to access arcane power to win the war. Once there, he's forced to carry out his research, committing atrocities on prisoners lest he face punishment or execution, and for fear that his wife might be taken by superior officers who have their eyes on her nordic beauty. For her part, Gertie soon finds herself facing an otherworldly place of horrors as she attracts the attention of an ancient entity. And lurking in the background, the god Odin manipulates the situation to try to outmaneuver his fated encounter with the wolf.

The Night Lies Bleeding marks a departure from the rest of the series in a number of ways. On the surface, there's the basic movement of setting out from the Middle Ages to the more familiar terrain of the early-mid Twentieth Century (while probably not personally familiar to most readers, it is a time that we would have heard about from parents or grandparents who experienced the War, and its effects are still visible upon the world stage and our cultural dialogue, even more than 70 years on).

As noted previously, there's also the change in the existence and perspective of Fenrir's avatar. Not having died in several centuries, Craw carries the detachment, aloofness, and vague melancholy that we've come to associate with immortals in speculative fiction, but — and here's where the author shows his skill — Craw is more interesting than his counterparts in literature and film in that he's not just aware of how different he is from normal humans because of his long life and extensive experiences, he's not just comparing everything to the good old days (though he does indulge in these things), more interestingly, he's constantly re-evaluating himself and his own behaviour in the world that normal humans have created. When another character says something or behaves in a certain modern way (let's say not showing deference to Craw as a person of higher social/economic status), Craw's immediate internal reaction is to feel insult or anger at the breach of protocol by an uppity peasant, but he then reminds himself that times have changed, reflects on the nature of those changes, and makes an effort to adapt. And not just to adapt his clothes or mannerisms — he's not simply engaging in a masquerade to be camouflaged among the humans — instead, he goes even further, reminding himself to change his beliefs and feelings, in essence, to change a part of who he is, because this kind of evolution of the self is the only way he can survive and remain sane (aside from periodic outbursts from the wolf). You never see Connor Macleod from Highlander, or the Greek gods of Peter S Beagle's Summerlong, or the various deities of Neil Gaiman's American Gods instigating that kind of internal change of self — they remain who they are. Lachlan's Fenrir, on the other hand, despite being a monster, has that capacity (which, perhaps in the eyes of other gods — though this perspective isn't given in this book — might be part of what makes him monstrous).

But this story also marks a departure from the other Wolfsangel books in that the nature of its horror has shifted somewhat. What was most frightening in the other books was the idea of the helpless loss of self at the hands of others. The transformation of an unwitting and unwilling avatar into Fenrir, caused by the vicious magic and schemes of gods or witches — beings so incredibly more powerful than the avatars that there was nothing they could do to prevent what was happening to them, with the change being accelerated as they were thrown onto blood-soaked battlefields. The focus of the other books was also, ultimately, on the carnage inflicted by the wolf as it pursued the woman it loved, usually to their mutual destruction, with the monstrous alienness of the supernatural being front and centre. But here, the supernatural elements are almost incidental. Yes, Craw becomes Fenrir. Yes, there are people trying to use the ancient runes to create more werewolves or to gain power or the favour of the old gods. Yes, there are supernatural entities trying to control the situation. But with the story shifting into the setting of the Second World War, the real horror that takes centre stage is the very real monstrousness of facism — the monstrousness of people who became Nazis. Here, the story is moving into Dan Simmons country, where no supernatural god or monster can compare with the horror of what human beings do to each other due to hate, evil beliefs, or self interest. Yes, the previous books were set during times where human beings committed monstrous acts upon one-another, such as Viking raids, or witches confining people in caves, or the Norman Harrying of the North. But those were background elements to their stories, where TNLB presents Nazi atrocities, and the willingness of people to do them, as its central thrust. What's most terrifying in this story is not a loss of self at the hands of more powerful beings, or the transformation of a man into a supernatural monster, but rather the loss of self and the transformation of a good man into an all-too-human monster as a result of deliberate choices that man takes upon himself. It is the horror of watching a once good man becoming desensitized to the cruelty and evil around him, being too weak to refuse to be a part it, and willingly participating in it — and rationalizing this decision as the right choice — in order to protect his own life  and that of his wife, but then ultimately to gain greater personal comforts and prestige. It's the horror of a person once sympathetic to the suffering of the human beings around him becoming one who indifferently sees them as disposable material. It is the all-too-real horror of a doctor transforming into a Nazi torturer. Fenrir, Odin's schemes to outwit Ragnarok, and the witch's possession all seem trivial compared to what human beings are doing to each other in World War II Europe. They seem trivial compared to what could be brewing in today's world of explosive nationalism and intolerance. It's a story that leaves the reader shaken, knowing that monsters can't be escaped just by closing the book.


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The Dinosaur Princess, by Victor Milan

Others have said it, and I'll gleefully hop on the bandwagon: Victor Milan's The Dinosaur Lords books should be adapted into a TV series (HBO or Netflix would be perfect). The reality though is that rather than listen to this excellent idea; or adapt another good, original story; or create something new, Hollywood will most likely continue to look inward and rehash old properties with modern twists. Instead of a lineup of top actors astride computer-generated hadrosaurs, T-Rexs and triceratops, we're more likely to be served something profoundly lame like a reboot of Barney Miller — except, rather than a half-hour, one set sitcom, it'd be an hour-long, gritty, gore-intensive, multi-location police procedural/crime drama where Wojciehowicz turns into a pacifist Buddhist to try to overcome crippling PTSD; Dietrich is now a woman and sidelined to desk duty amidst allegations of police brutality; Harris is a mom trying to advance in her career while raising three young kids, dealing with a husband who's a world-class chef who cheats on her, and supporting an elderly mother who wants to go back to school to become an archaeologist; Yemana talks to the ghosts of murder victims; Fish is a closet BDSM sex addict; and Barney himself may or may not be on the take from the mob. You know they're going to do it. Probably with a high-octane pilot episode featuring a gun battle in the streets (a-la Heat) where the squad tries to foil a bank job by Big Blast, the guy who likes to use a bazooka for robberies. Hey, that might actually be kinda cool... Wait! What did I say? No. Must... focus... on... quality... storytelling. Really, Milan's Dinosaur series needs to be adapted for TV or streaming services, and that includes the latest instalment, 2017's The Dinosaur Princess, because it's just so visual, and just so good.

The Dinosaur Princess picks up just after the events of The Dinosaur Knights, with the people of the Empire of Nuevaropa on the world of Paradise regrouping after their defeat of the Grey Angel Raguel and its horde of mindless humans (along with some fully-aware knights and nobles who followed the angel willingly out of self-interest). The emperor returns with his court to the capital, but the victory is hollow. Apart from the appalling loss of life and the fear that another Grey Angel may come to launch a follow-up crusade against mankind, the court is creaking under the intrigue of rival factions. On one side, there's Princess Melodia, who finds herself sidelined at court, back to being daddy's girl, despite her success as a light cavalry (which means horse cavalry on a world where heavy mounts are usually duck-billed dinosaurs, but can also include ceratopsians and the big carnivores) commander during the war. But even worse, Duke Falk — the man who imprisoned and raped her while scheming to take control of the empire — has also survived the battle, and due to his bravery defending the her father, the emperor, he's hailed as a hero and keeps a senior position in the government. Worst of all, Melodia knows that if she calls Falk out, the political chaos could cause a civil war (if anyone believed her) and Falk, knowing this, takes every opportunity to cast glances and verbally needle her, savouring her inability to respond. But Melodia has a powerful ally: her many-times-great grandmother, who returns to the capital to school the princess in the castle's hidden secrets, arranges for her to learn to fight astride dinosaurs, and helps her learn palace intrigue and prepare to take revenge, because no-one goes after the old lady's family and lives to tell the tale. But Falk isn't alone either: his scheming mother has arrived and made a bee-line for the emperor's bed to cement her family's control. Meanwhile, the renegade noble Karyl has been welcomed back into the fold after leading the attack against the angel (and, specifically, after his allosaurus, Shiraa, ate it), along with his sidekick, Rob the dinosaur trainer. But the good times don't last for the pair when Karyl is visited by the queen of the supernatural fae, who has her own designs against humanity. And if that isn't enough, the emperor's youngest daughter, Princess Montse is kidnapped, with another country seemingly to blame, and Melodia's fiance Jaume and his squad of knights have to try to rescue her before war breaks out.

As with its predecessors, The Dinosaur Princess is one hell of a fun ride, treating readers to knight-on-dinosaur mashup action; court intrigue; well-rounded, believable characters; and a lush world combining elements of Medieval warfare, the style of ancient Mexican and South American empires, and, of course, dinosaurs. It's rewarding to see Melodia continue to develop as a character as she picks up skills with new tools to survive both dinosaur combat and life-and-death plots against rival families within the castle walls. Karyl and Rob are also characters that I couldn't wait to see more of from chapter to chapter as the noble tries to hold up under the political and seemingly supernatural pressures piled on top of him while coming to terms with his new lease on life, and his salt-of-the-earth sidekick thrives under new responsibilities, even as he longs for his old carefree days. As always, I also have to take my hat off to artist Richard Anderson for the wonderful sketches at the head of each chapter, and especially the cover art, which just explodes off of the book and into your brain.

And while I can't find any flaws within the story of The Dinosaur Princess itself, the overall series may be weakened by the possibility that it will remain incomplete. Tragically, Victor Milan died this past winter. The man had real talent that will be missed from the genre (his contributions to the Wildcards mosaic novels were great, and I'm sure others can sing the praises of his other novels), and his death leaves The Dinosaur Lords series hanging. That's because The Dinosaur Princess is only half a book. Just like The Dinosaur Lords was half a story, and needed The Dinosaur Knights to complete the tale of the battle against the Grey Angel's crusade, there needs to be more to tie-off the plot threads The Dinosaur Princess leaves dangling, and to give the reader a sense of completeness, or, at least, wholeness to the story. George RR Martin, a friend of Milan's, has speculated that Milan "may have another book or two in his DINOSAUR LORDS [sic] sequence coming out, but I am not sure of that." As fans of the series, we can hope that's the case, and that capable editors at Tor, possibly with the help of other writers (as we saw with Kevin J Anderson finishing The Wheel of Time series after the death of Robert Jordan), will be able to work with whatever drafts and/or notes Milan left behind to wrap things up.

If that's not the case, and there is insufficient material to work with, or an unwillingness from the publishing house or the author's estate to continue the project, then the question becomes how should someone new to the series approach it? Is it even worth reading, in the absence of an end to The Dinosaur Princess' storyline, never mind the overall plot of the series? I know some readers who are completists, and won't touch a series if the author hasn't seen it to its end. But these stories, this world, and these characters are just too good to not experience. If there's nothing further, I'd be tempted to suggest that someone new to the series could just read The Dinosaur Lords and The Dinosaur Knights. There's enough closure with the success of the battle against the Grey Angel to satisfy a completist. Does that mean that The Dinosaur Princess should then be ignored? Not necessarily. I think that anyone who really enjoys the first two books should definitely read TDP. Sure, they might be left hanging, but even if things are left open, does that matter? The Dinosaur Princess is a sufficiently good, if incomplete, story on its own to be worth reading. And, let's not forget what Emperor Londo Mollari admonished his young audience in Babylon 5: In the Beginning: "The story... is not over yet. The story is never over." So enjoy The Dinosaur Princess for what it is, as a single moment in time. More story left untold, perhaps, but more open trails for dinosaurs to tread in your imagination.


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Daughter of Eden, by Chris Beckett

What if you had a chance to meet your gods? What if they didn't live up to your expectations? What if the story they told, and the values they held, were different than what you believed?

As much as Daughter of Eden features civilizations coming to terms with the reality of their gods and the durability of their beliefs and identity, this final book in Chris Beckett's Dark Eden trilogy is about the little people. Where Dark Eden focussed on John Redlantern, a combination Cain and Moses figure, inventor, and breaker and builder of civilizations; and Mother of Eden was about Starlight, a messianic figure and one of the great beauties of Eden, who tries to bring compassion to a people; Daughter of Eden is about Angie, a regular peasant who's just trying to get by.  When her island community is taken over by the hard-line religious culture of the mainland (or Mainground, as it's known), Angie's people disperse and in order to survive she has to fall in with a small forest tribe of a different faith; marry (after a fashion) and have kids with a simple-minded man; occasionally allow his brother, the one-handed chief (who's a bit of a bully stuck in the memory of his glory days with the army), to have sex with her; and endure prejudice from the others for being a foreigner from a religious/political/cultural minority and because she's a "batface" (a person with an extreme form of harelip, one of the conditions common among the population of Eden due to extensive inbreeding). But Angie is intelligent and practical, and does what she has to in order to live and provide for her children. The story alternates between this present and her youth, just after the dissolution of her home community, when she took to the road as the assistant to a priestess (the people of Eden worship the policewoman/astronaut/castaway who was the mother of their race), criss-crossing Mainground from the towns and villages on the coast to the original settlement in a valley beyond the mountains where their astronaut forebears were stranded. In that past, Angie sees the importance of religious belief to the Maingrounders' self-image and ability to deal with the hardships of life, and she learns what can happen when an intelligent person questions those beliefs and is honest enough to admit a life among the faithful may not be for her. Meanwhile, in the present, Angie witnesses the arrival of an invasion fleet from New Earth (a nation with a similar but somewhat different religion — think Protestants as opposed to Catholics — founded by John after he and his followers fled Mainground generations before). As the New Earth soldiers with their superior weaponry begin their brutal conquest, Angie and her people flee across the mountains to humanity's original home on Eden, arriving, coincidentally, just before a scientific expedition from Earth. After hundreds of years, humanity has decided to find the planet its first experimental starship went to when it was stolen, and to see if there are any traces of the rogue astronauts or the police who tried to bring them home. When the Earthlings introduce themselves, first to Angie, then to their other local cousins, the people of Eden — Maingrounders and New Earthers alike, as well as other, smaller civilizations — must come to grips with the reality of meeting gods whose stories and worldview don't match up with their own.

Daughter of Eden is a smart, intelligent, and absorbing page-turner of a book. It's strength is in Beckett's shifting of gears to focus on the life and perspective of a normal person who's generally at the mercy of the more powerful people around her, and her culture, but who ultimately is important (as the regular people of the world usually are, despite credit usually going to the great) to how events play out. Angie is important not just for being the first one to spot the New Earth invasion fleet, or to make first contact with the astronauts and act as a cultural liaison to them, or discover a long-lost holy relic, but because she (again, a normal person, not one of the leaders) is the one who is telling this story, a story that will be heard by many of the communities on her world as she assumes a new role at the end of the novel. She has a voice. Despite being one of the typically downtrodden, she is a person with agency. Despite being one of the little people, she matters.

Moreover, once we meet the new astronauts and they begin to share history about the original incident involving the starship and information about the Edenites' progenitor/goddess Gela, and when they begin to share recordings left by her, we begin to see that she was a regular person too. One with flaws and worries and no grand schemes about creating a holy legacy. As Angie (and the others) learn all of this, she realizes that even gods can be little people too. That little people can be important. That they can build new, lasting things and shape the world around them.

We also see (through Angie's eyes) the new astronauts having to change their worldview too. At first, they have to get their heads around an entire world full of humans descended from just two people, not just surviving, but thriving in spite of the genetic problems from massive inbreeding, lack of modern technology or contact with Earth, and having to adapt to an alien lifestyle under the dim light of glowing trees in the darkness of a rogue, starless planet orbiting the galaxy. They have to get past their initial pity and revulsion for a people who (due to their genetic abnormalities, nutritional deficiencies, and environmental conditions) look different from Earthlings and who live in violent, technologically primitive, religious fundamentalist cultures. They have to deal with the disappointment of being confronted by a people who are disappointed that the astronauts' statement of facts has challenged accepted dogmas on Eden. And they have to see the potential in some of Eden's inhabitants to become more than they are.

A few years ago, I stumbled on Dark Eden by accident and picked it up on the strength of it's win of the 2013 Arthur C Clarke Award, and, most of all, because of its back cover description of descendants of interstellar castaways living in the biological lamplight of trees on a planet of darkness. I was glad I did, and I'm just as glad now that Daughter of Eden has wrapped things up as strongly as the series began. Buy this book.

A Harvest of Mini Reviews for the Fall

Harvest season: fat, orange moons lumbering along the horizon; a crispness in the air that warns no matter how hot the days may still be, winter is coming; the crackle of leaves of a million colours underfoot; and the bounty of the fields coming in. What better time to collect a bushel of books read over the summer and serve up a feast of mini reviews.

On the table for your consumption:

League of Dragons by Naomi Novik
The Dinosaur Knights by Victor Milan
Enter the Janitor by Josh Vogt
The Dragon and the Stars edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi
Thunderbird by Jack McDevitt
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
Saint's Blood by Sebastien de Castell
Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay


As always, the spoilage warning is in effect.


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League of Dragons
by Naomi Novik

The closing chapter of the Temeraire alternate history series, League of Dragons, opens with Napoleon's army in full retreat from Russia, but the British-Russian-Prussian-Chinese allied forces are still unable to capture the French emperor. As if dealing with food shortages and battle isn't enough, Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire, have to contend with duels with cruel nobles, challenges to Laurence's authority by other British officers, and the imminent hatching of Temeraire Junior. But the question of dragons' rights (spearheaded by Temeraire) becomes the pivotal issue. Napoleon may still gain the upper hand because of his policy of extending full standing as citizens to his dragons. He already has the unswerving loyalty of his own dragons and those of the Inca (through his marriage to that empire's leader), and many feral dragons as well. And his league of dragons may soon win over other powers, including the Tswana in Africa (who succeeded in pushing European colonizers and slavers off of their continent), Japan, India, and some First Nations in North America. The equality issue even threatens to undermine the loyalty of dragons in the UK. As Laurence and Temeraire try to organize a final decisive attack against Napoleon, their hopes are pinned on dragons winning equal rights in Britain in time to gain enough support to win the war in Europe.

Like the other Temeraire novels, League of Dragons is a lot of fun and a good, fast read (if you have the time, you could probably get through it in a day or two). Novik's characters are well-rounded and believable (I know Temeraire is probably supposed to have an English accent, but for some reason, right from the start, I've always imagined him sounding like Henry Gibson as Wilbur in the 1973 animated version of Charlotte's Web), and she's done a good job of portraying British and European societies of the early 1800s.

My only problem with the story is that in the final act, Novik denies the audience the chance to see the head-to-head fight where Napoleon is at last captured. One minute, Laurance, Temeraire, and their air crew are closing on Napoleon and his rogue Chinese dragon, Lien, and the next the battle is over and everyone's preparing to bundle the former emperor off to his exile while they decide how France will be run. For several novels, Novik has been building towards the collision between Temeraire and Lien: the white dragon has launched schemes and intrigues, insulted and threatened Temeraire and Laurence, helped Bonaparte enhance his air corps and recruit feral dragons, and forged his army into a nearly unstoppable juggernaut. The whole time, Temeraire has fretted about her threat and set himself on a course for revenge. And then 'League comes along, with plenty of blow-by-blow bloody scraps with other dragons throughout the plot, but no account of the final reckoning between the opposing Celestial dragons. It's one thing to tease the audience; it's one thing to leave the audience wanting more; but to give us nothing of what the series has been building towards, that's a mistake — no, a failure — that even the 2014 Godzilla avoided (and that flick was bogged-down with dragon-sized plotting mistakes). Does this omission ruin the novel? No. But it does take away some of the lustre from what should be a gem of a story for any dragon-lover's hoard of books.

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The Dinosaur Knights
by Victor Milan

When The Dinosaur Lords hit the shelves last summer, I couldn't get through it fast enough. It was a savage, fun mashup with interesting characters, great action, a cool world (well, pretty hot and muggy, actually), and wonderful yet simple art accompanying the chapter headings. I tore through it like an allosaurus slicing through a duckbill haunch. And I wanted more.

A couple of months ago, volume two, The Dinosaur Knights, finally arrived, and I giddily gorged on it, and it was every bit as sticky sweet tasty as the first book.

'Knights picks up more-or-less where 'Lords leaves off: Voyvod Karyl continues to gather and train an army to defend the territory of Providence — ostensibly run by a commune of "Gardeners" dedicated to beauty and truth — from attacks by cruel neighbouring nobles. This, despite the fact that some of the ruling council of Gardeners are becoming increasingly strident and narrow in their definitions of beauty and truth, undermining their leader, putting Karyl on trial, and taking a greater degree of control over the lives of their region's citizens. Dinosaur master Rob Korrigan continues to support Karyl, acting as spymaster even as he tends to his stable of monsters — whose ranks are swollen by the arrival of a squad of huge triceratops and their fighting crews. Soon the army is joined by imperial princess Melodia (still fleeing the brutal intrigues of the court), who has to survive the hidden dangers of Garden politics, as well as the challenges of becoming the leader of Karyl's light cavalry. But fending-off scheming Gardeners and attacks from local nobles is the least of Karyl's worries: the imperial crusade, under the command of Melodia's lover, Jaume, has now been ordered to scour Providence of the Gardeners. To do this, Jaume has to deal with fanatical priests, the presence of his court rival, Duke Falk, and the on-site supervision of his unpredictable emperor. And it gets worse: one of the feared Grey Angels of legend has re-appeared, raising an army of mindless servants to raze humanity as punishment for supposedly sinning against the gods. Karyl, Melodia, Rob, and their people are caught between the hammer and the anvil as they flee the growing, ravenous horde towards the imperial army.

I really can't say enough about how much I loved The Dinosaur Knights. As popcorn reads of science fiction and fantasy go, this is a huge popcorn ball covered in bourbon-spiked caramel with chunks of toffee and macadamia nuts dipped in fine chocolate. Great characters, a lush, well-built world, and fucking knights riding fucking dinosaurs!!!

This book was so enjoyable that it pains me to say something bad about it. But it has to be said. While there's nothing wrong with the story, the proofreading job done in this book was a mess: glaringly obvious mistakes all over the place that show the proofreader really wasn't paying attention. The problems were so bad that they frequently pulled me out of the story. And a story this good shouldn't suffer because the editing staff dropped the ball (and let it roll right off the court and into the grease catcher beneath the chip wagon in the parking lot).

That said, Victor Milan has told one hell of a tale with The Dinosaur Knights, and I'm waiting eagerly for the next instalment.

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Enter the Janitor
by Josh Vogt

Is it wrong to review a book when you've only read less than half of it? Some might say so. Not me. If the book was bad enough to make me give up on it after 14 chapters, I ought to be able to tell you so. And I will.

Think of Men in Black, or RIPD, or any other science fiction or fantasy story using the trope of the kid who doesn't know what's really going on with the world who suddenly has the curtain pulled back, signs up for the Weirdness Law Enforcement Bureau or whatever it's called, and is taken under the wing of the crusty veteran. Hijinks ensue. Evil is defeated. Add hints of "the chosen one" plot device (or, at least, I was picking up a little of that vibe by the time I got as far as I did), and wrap the goodguys in the guise of janitors fighting evil/chaos/whatever-is-represented-by-dirt-grime-and-all-that-is-gross, and you've got Enter the Janitor.

In this case, we have Dani, a college student who is nearly incapacitated by her germ phobia, in the role of rookie/chosen one, and Ben as the gruff, wizened master. Who lives in his van. And is depicted on the book's cover as looking somewhat like Bruce Campbell, but within the pages is more reminiscent of Scruffy Scruffington, the janitor at Planet Express on Futurama. Dani's in the vicinity when Ben slugs it out with a drain clog demon or whatever in the library washroom and then, well, you know the rest because the plot (at least as far as I got) is standard fare, more-or-less.

In short (because it's just not worth while to go long with ETJ), the story's boring inside its well-trodden concept, the characters are uninspired, it tries like hell to be funny but fails completely, and it comes off as prissy when it (frequently) makes reference to the fact that the characters aren't allowed to swear. Dani tries, but rather than allowing her to get in some cussing in italics to show what she's thinking rather than saying, we're treated to a row of asterisks. It's not like this is the Victorian era, where swearing just wasn't allowed in print. Unless this is a YA book (and I don't see any such branding on my copy), we're all adults here and I think we can handle a "fuck" or "shit" or two. Worse, for some reason it takes Dani a couple of pages before she realizes that nothing's coming out of her mouth when she tries to swear, which makes no sense. I don't know about you, but if I was good and mad and launched into some creative metaphors, I'd realize right away if the desired foul language didn't actually make it out of my mouth when everything else did. Characters should either be allowed to swear or not, but don't go dancing around the issue in chapter after chapter like some smarmy brat needling the kid next to him in a Sunday school class.

Maybe Enter the Janitor cleans up its act in the rest of the book, but with the first 120-odd pages being as lacklustre as they are, I can't be bothered to find out.

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The Dragon and the Stars
edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi

Six years ago, this is the book I'd thought I'd wanted to read. I've mentioned previously that I love short story anthologies showcasing talent from a given country or cultural group. They provide a window into the minds of a people, allowing us a glimpse of their history, the issues that are important to them, and their dreams, aspirations, and nightmares. Ideally, you also get to read some cracking good science fiction and fantasy stories, some of which may have perspectives you haven't considered before. Back in 2010, my wife and I were travelling in Asia — we had to attend a friend's wedding in Bali, and since we were flying all the way over there, we scheduled a couple of weeks in my wife's home of Hong Kong, and tacked-on an extra week to see the sights in Beijing. The whole time we were in Hong Kong, I scoured every bookstore we came across that had an English section to see if it had any anthologies of translated Chinese sf short stories. After all, if we were going to be travelling in the region, it would have been nice to read its particular flavour of nerdity. Sadly, I was out of luck. I was only able to find the usual American and British sf offerings in English. Nothing from the home team (the stores might have had stuff in basic or traditional Chinese text, but that wouldn't have done me any good — my Chinese is limited to speaking a few words and phrases in Cantonese, nothing written).  Fast-forward to 2015, where I stumbled across The Dragon and the Stars at a bookseller's stall at a convention. An anthology devoted to showcasing authors from the Chinese diaspora? I thought it would be exactly the kind of collection I was looking for!

Unfortunately, it didn't meet my expectations in terms of quality.

To be fair, there were a couple of very good stories in it. Tony Pi sets the bar high, starting the collection with the excellent "The Character of the Hound", about a man who allows himself to be possessed by a dog spirit (although perhaps "possessed" is too strong a word, it may be more accurate to say that he plays host to, and partners with, the entity) to help him chase down a thief. "Threes", by EL Chen, is about a woman feeling somewhat adrift in life in part because of the disappearance of her mother years before, who comes home to a pair of squabbling sisters and a father who may be losing his mind — or who may just realize that his lost wife may be returning in an unusual way. A sensitive, well-crafted story that's worth the read. Brenda W Clough's steampunkish "The Water Weapon" was funny and had some punch. And Ken Liu's "Beidou" was a smart, solid read.

That said, the bulk of the contributions to the anthology were mediocre and forgettable, and two entries were flat-out terrible — so bad that it's not worth any time complaining about them in detail.

I'd really hoped for a stronger collection, but The Dragon and the Stars just didn't deliver. And so, while I won't say I'm back to square one where I was six years ago, my search for a really good anthology of Chinese sf (whether it's from people of Chinese heritage from around the world, written in English, or whether it's something that's been translated from contributors living in China) continues.

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Thunderbird
by Jack McDevitt

Several months ago, I was sent an ARC of Jack McDevitt's Thunderbird to review for SF Signal. While I read the book soon after receiving it, admittedly I procrastinated on writing the review and didn't send anything to the 'Signal before the site took its final bow. So, now I'm finally getting around to it.

Thunderbird is the sequel to McDevitt's 1996 novel Ancient Shores, about the discovery of an ancient boat — and then a star gate — of unknown origin in North Dakota on traditional First Nations territory. In Thunderbird, the local Sioux band council has maintained a tight control over the star gate, even as pressure mounts from the US government and the rest of the world to gain access to the device and the planets it's linked to, while others are calling for its destruction. While the Reserve's chairman recruits scientists (and a local talk show host) to join his people on their explorations of the garden world Eden, the tunnels of the Labyrinth, the derelict space station adrift beyond the edge of the Milky Way, and the other destinations each of these connects to (some of which prove to be inhabited), residents of a couple of surrounding communities begin to have encounters with a mysterious, telepathic cloud creature that's made its way through the gate to Earth.

I'm on the fence about Thunderbird. Didn't love it. Didn't hate it.

On one hand, it kept me reasonably interested and entertained during a six hour plane flight at the end of November that had no seat-back TV/movie service. The story has a solid opening that piqued my interest, and it wasn't hard to get up to speed in a world and set of circumstances already set in motion by a first novel that I hadn't read. In terms of characters, Sioux Chairman James Walker is a thoughtful, even-keeled, personable guy who's so well crafted that he reminded me a lot of a couple of Chiefs, elders, band councillors and treaty negotiators I've met over the years. I also liked the detail that McDevitt puts into his worlds, and the fact that not all of them are safe to just walk into. And there are what look to be a couple of quick references to Farmer's Riverworld and Clarke's Childhood's End that work nicely.

On the other hand, there's a lot about the book that's problematic. The dialogue is often clunky. There are also frequent references to the amount of security staff guarding the stargate site and escorting the exploration teams, but we don't see any signs of decontamination procedures when people come back from their expeditions, or security monitoring of the departure room, or even cameras taken to document the trips to other planets. There's a lot that could go undetected and undocumented, and if the worst that happened was that Louie the cloud creature managed to slip through from the Labyrinth world and cause a few car accidents, these people got very lucky.

Aside from the lack of even a cheap GoPro camera on the expeditions, the staffing is a little weird. Sure, I can understand that April the chemist, who's been the Band's go-to scientist for a while, might be kept on as the scientific lead for a while, but you'd think that when the bridge was discovered on Eden the team would pull back until they could get an anthropologist on board to take over. Especially when the bridge leads them to a first contact situation with the "gorilla" aliens (let's call a spade a spade: the author's brought Big Foot into the story, so now all we need is either Steve Austin or Wild Boy to make an appearance) and their culture.

In terms of the science teams, I was disappointed that on a couple of occasions, McDevitt describes two of the scientists as being overweight and unhealthy. Fat shaming? Really? Just because someone's overweight, doesn't mean they're unhealthy. Describing one character this way would be fine, because not everyone carrying extra weight is capable of going on a hike, but both heavy characters (when only two people in book are described that way)? That's unfair, ignorant, and just plain lazy writing.

Speaking of lazy writing, the story could have done without the President's Chief of Staff, Admiral Bonner. Sure, this is a story that, in some ways, suffers from a lack of antagonists, but Bonner is more of a caricature than a real character: a stereotypical, narrow-minded military man who's only contribution to the stargate discussion is to insist that everything has to be blown up just to be safe. While his role was limited to brief walk-ons to harass the President about the need to make things go kablooey, he was just so ridiculously single-minded as to be unbelievable, and that detracted from the overall believability of the story.

Then there's Brad Hollister, the local radio talk show host. I have no problems with the way Brad is portrayed as a person — as the non-expert on the off-world expeditions, his character is perfect for the reader to identify with. But the descriptions of Brad as a professional broadcaster just don't match with the real world. There's a section where Brad is described as feeling out of place when acting in a news capacity, and doesn't think of himself as a journalist. As a former radio news journalist, I've met several talk show hosts in my time, and none of them would ever feel out of place gathering or presenting the news — or anywhere near a mic, story, or potential audience for matter — and they certainly wouldn't think that they weren't journalists, especially if they were involved with an event as significant as a stargate and exploring other worlds. Talk show hosts are a pretty confident bunch when they're doing their jobs. There's also the bit where Brad returns from an off-world expedition and proceeds to hold a news conference outside the stargate building. Um, no. No self-respecting reporter — or talkshow host, for that matter — especially one working for the local radio station, would ever come back with that kind of a scoop and just start sharing with the other media outlets. A real reporter, anchor, or talkshow host would step off the stargate pad, go to a corner, take out his/her cell phone, and file live to his/her own station first, before coming out and dealing with the competition — and dealing with the competition would at best involve giving details only after first filing for his/her own station, and, at worst would be to smile and say "You'll hear everything on our 4:00 (or whenever) newscast on KLYM!" because being a nice guy is fine as long as your station gets the story first, or you won't be working for that station for very long. Given the attitude of Brad's boss, this approach should be as true in the book as it is in real life.

Then there are the problems with Chairman Walker. For starters, he seems to do a lot of unilateral decision making. Now, I know, different First Nations have different governance policies and traditions, but you'd think he'd consult with his Band Council or a few elders before making half the decisions he does over the course of the book. Especially when it comes to his final choice (super mega ultra spoilage here) to permanently disable the stargate by tossing one of its components into Lake Superior. I just don't buy it that he'd do something that drastic on his own. But, really, I don't believe he'd do something like this at all. Right from the start, Walker is written as a smart, careful guy who makes sure he has a good sense of what's going on around him. The reality is that with a technology this advanced, important, and controversial, the stargate and Walker (and probably everyone else involved with the artifact and science teams) would be heavily monitored by human surveillance teams and electronics (including spy satellites) from every intelligence gathering organization within the US, as well as by other governments, and probably more than a few corporations and other NGOs. Walker wouldn't be able to sneeze without it being documented in detail by several agencies. So there's no way he'd be able to get a piece of stargate equipment out of the artifact, off the Reserve, and into the lake without it being known and without his every movement being tracked to within a metre. He might be able to dump the thing in the lake — for about a day until a recovery expedition was mounted by someone else. And the thing is, until the end of the book anyway, Walker's smart enough to know this, so he wouldn't waste time on a corny and ineffective scheme like this. Again, lazy writing. The book also says at a few points that Walker is feeling a lot of pressure to do something about the stargate, but it doesn't do a very good job of showing the reader how that pressure is manifesting. Sure, there are a few phone calls/enounters with the President, but the President is such a nice guy about it that there's no feeling of urgency to back up his words. There's a single meeting with the Band Council, and a meeting with a corporate CEO, but that's it. There are a lot of better, more visual and thus visceral ways that "pressure" could have been illustrated: new people suddenly showing up in town and following Walker and other Band members around, something to show that his phone was being tapped, or that his email was being intercepted, or government helicopters patrolling the local airspace constantly, or any number of things that would do a better job of illustrating an increasing level of attention from outsiders and an urgency about the future than simple complaints from the Chairman.

And that's a problem with the story as a whole: there really isn't any urgency to any of it. Maybe for a moment when one of the science expeditions runs into a scary creature on a desolate planet, but only for a moment. Then the pacing eases back to its normal, gentle flow, and the plot continues to meander back and forth between different characters and different situations that are interesting without being compelling. In essence, the story wanders like Louie the cloud creature, and, like it, may generate a little excitement from time to time, but mostly is just inoffensive and just kind of there. I certainly didn't mind reading Thunderbird, but I just can't see myself ever picking it up again.

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Dark Eden
by Chris Beckett

I stumbled across Chris Beckett's Dark Eden entirely by accident back in 2014. Apparently, it won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2013, but I didn't see it at any of my local bookstores. In '14, I was in London for WorldCon, and one night, after having dinner with some friends, had been wandering the streets of Soho in the rain (no, we hadn't just gone to Lee Ho Foot's for a big dish of beef chow mein, although that would have been tasty) when we ducked into a bookstore (can't remember which one), and Dark Eden caught my eye up in the sf section. And I'm so glad it did.

On the world of Eden, a planet that doesn't get sunlight, where the only light comes from the glowing fruit of geothermal-heat-fed trees and the animals that live among them, the members of the Family live, more-or-less, in contentment. Descended from two ship-wrecked astronauts (one, a cop, the other, a thief), these 530-odd people live a hunter-gatherer existence in a couple of different tribes spread out across their forested valley, practicing a kind of free love semi-matriarchal society and worshipping the artifacts left by their progenitors. Some are normal, while others have deformities no doubt caused by their limited gene pool. One of the hunters, a young man named John, isn't content with their life. The rituals ring hollow to him, the tribal elders seem small-minded and petty,  he wants to explore beyond their valley, and he's becoming more concerned about how the Family keeps growing, while their food sources are becoming scarce. And John isn't the only one: Tina's interested in John, but she's dissatisfied with aspects of the Family's life as well, and concerned with an increasingly ugly turn its politics is taking; and Gerry the crippled genius has reasoned that things will change whether anyone wants them to or not. When John causes a scandal at the Family's annual religious gathering, he's exiled, and Tina, Gerry, and a few other youths and children join him. But living on the fringes of the valley isn't enough, when a thuggish "batface" (someone suffering from a severe hare lip) named David forms a gang that uses intimidation and violence in a growing bid to take over, John, Tina and the others have to undertake a dangerous journey into the cold dark wilderness to try to find another home.

Dark Eden is a superb piece of writing. Its beautiful, dangerous, fairy light world of gloom (like a rave without the uninspired techno music, or a gym light only by Christmas trees, or a bunch of kids playing with flashlights and glowsticks in a dark basement — that is, if a basement or gym or rave warehouse was also populated by six-legged reindeer, and singing black panthers were stalking everyone and everything) is a fresh setting that's detailed and believable. The story taps into elements of Genesis and Exodus — with a generous dash of Mad Max - Beyond Thunderdome flavouring — and doesn't pull any punches about what would happen to people and an ecosystem in this kind of situation. Beckett's characters are well-rounded, evolving, and believable. While John is at times Adam, Moses, a kind of Cain, a great hunter, something of an inventor, and a visionary, he's also (as Tina takes note) stubborn, deliberately emotionally distant, and sometimes manipulative and arrogantly single-minded. And yet, even he grows, learning that sometimes it's best to run rather than fight. Tina changes from a moon-eyed girl chasing after her would-be boyfriend to an astute leader in her own right. Even David, the cruel boss of the Guards, changes from merely being a dismissible asshole in the tribe to an up-and-coming tyrant who cunningly realizes that what's really a simple scandal with a rebellious teenager can be his vehicle for taking power, changing society, and getting pretty much anything he wants.

I can't wait to get into Dark Eden's sequel, Mother of Eden (which I ordered a little while ago and, having arrived, has now moved to the top of my to-be-read pile), and the upcoming conclusion to the series, Daughter of Eden.

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Saint's Blood
by Sebastien de Castell

A couple of months ago, I was offered an early copy of Saint's Blood — the newest instalment in Sebastien de Castell's Greatcoats series — for review, and  I jumped on it like a fat kid on a Smartie (Okay, admittedly, I am the fat kid, and I would, in fact, jump on a Smartie if it fell out of the box onto the counter or a clean floor — within the 5-second rule limit — in front of me. I mean, come on... Smarties! They're better than M&Ms and you can make the box into a single-note harmonica!). I've greatly enjoyed the first two books (Traitor's Blade and Knight's Shadow) and would have snapped this one up anyway. The fact that it was free was nice, but that's not enough to influence my opinion of a book. So what did I think?

Loads of fun!

This time around, just when Falcio, Kest, Brasti and their companions think they should be closer to restoring the monarchy, order, and justice to the strife-torn land of Tristia, things (of course) spiral increasingly out of control. Someone is torturing and murdering saints, and whipping the peasants into a frenzy of zealotry. Worse: those behind the killings have found a way to drain the saints of their mystical powers and use that energy to supercharge fanatical assassins hellbent on killing Greatcoats — and anyone else standing in their way. Even Tristia's gods aren't safe: the mastermind behind the religious revolution has figured out a way to create a new god, one that will force the land to submit to the new order. And so Falcio and the others, battered, beaten, outnumbered, outgunned, and on the run, have to figure out how to protect their young queen and defeat an opponent powerful enough to make a god. Oh yeah, and there's some cool cane-fighting too.

As usual, de Castell serves-up a story heaped with action and humour, seasoned with heart and intelligence. Reading it, you flinch at every slice of a blade through skin during the duels, you feel Falcio's mind scrabble around like a rat as he tries to figure his way out of one trap or fight or mistake or another, and you feel the confusion and frustration of the Greatcoats as everything they've started to rebuild falls apart and their friends are brutalized with seemingly nothing to be done to help them. You also feel the frustration and sad resignation as two lovers grow apart. But there's the excitement of the chase. There are the smiles as Brasti and the others dig at each other with jibes as merciless as steel. And there's the satisfaction of seeing Tristia move a little closer towards redemption, even if the way it gets there isn't quite how Falcio imagined it would.

The only problem I had with the book was the jarring effect created by the use of first person narration in the chapters dealing with the Greatcoat gang's first encounter with the new god. Normally, riding shotgun with Falcio through this story (and the previous novels as well) works just fine, but when the group has its initial confrontation with the god, Falcio goes out of commission for a while; when he wakes up, the god is gone, and we don't really get a full sense of what was involved that resulted in the god leaving. We're left with the feeling that this newly-minted deity and his handler just kinda wandered off. Granted, that might be sufficient for Falcio in terms of what he experiences as he wakes up to a suddenly much lower threat level, but I don't think so — he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would be content with waking up and finding out that the big bad has just exited stage left — and it's certainly not sufficient for the reader. In a confrontation like that, it just doesn't seem believable that the god and his handler would say "Well, that pesky Falcio's face-down in the dirt. Kinda takes the fun out of things. Forget about everyone else standing around, let's go get a sandwich or something. Yeah, a sammy sounds good right about now. Maybe liver and onions." and then that Falcio would come back on the scene and not really think anything of it. Admittedly, the bad guy seems to take the greatest amount of satisfaction from tweaking the nose of Falcio in particular, but you'd think that before they moseyed-off into the woods that they'd smite one or two of the other goody-goodies in their path (beyond the damage already done) just for good measure. Possibly a maiming, or even just a wee little permanently-psychologically-damaging snide remark or something. But nope, they just kinda leave, leaving the Greatcoats et al still on their feet just kinda defaulting to fretting over those lying in the dirt without any real questioning of, or explaining, how they're all actually still alive and not still staring down a petulant incarnation of asshattery. It's not a scene that's weak enough to torpedo the entire novel, but it is one that's annoying enough to pull a reader out of the flow of the story for a bit. At the very least, it needs more filling-in-the-blanks/while-you-were-away storytelling from the supporting characters when Falcio's interacting with them again. Certainly more than we're given, which is pretty much nothing. A story this good deserves a little more backstory from the supporting cast to get around the weakness of the first person style when the narrator's attention was elsewhere.

But, like any good duelist, the story shakes off this momentary mistake and gets back to the business of circling in towards its final satisfaction. And it is an immensely satisfying book. The only question is, now that the Greatcoats and their queen have dealt with a god, what could they possibly face next that could be any worse? The way the world seems to like to beat up Falcio, there's no doubt that something worse will be coming soon enough. And, as mean as it sounds, I can't wait to see it.

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Children of Earth and Sky
by Guy Gavriel Kay

A poor, young artist is summoned to the most dangerous commission of his life: painting the portrait of the Khalif of a powerful and hostile empire across the sea. A noblewoman tries to create a place for herself in the world as forces beyond her control tear the ground out from under her feet again and again. A young archer seeks whatever opportunities she can get that will help her avenge her family. A fledgeling soldier tries to decide what is right as he's swept through the challenges of training camp politics, and warfare. And the son of a merchant searches for wealth beyond his coin purse and the next big deal. As two mighty empires in Guy Gavriel Kay's historical analogue world crash into one another, people from the middle and minor powers on the sidelines (his quarter twist towards fantasy renditions of Venice and Dubrovnik and others going about their business in the shadows of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires) do whatever they can to survive, and, if possible, find happiness.

When you read a Guy Gavriel Kay story, you know you're going to get two things: a set of thoughtful, sensitive stories about believable people (sometimes the mighty, sometimes the humble) living amidst interesting times; and a meditation on life. As with Kay's other tales, Children of Earth and Sky has a tidal ebb and flow between the scrutiny of those lives — each like a wave coming in to shore — and a pulling back to a philosophical mediation (sometimes a humorous musing, sometimes a sad reflection) about what it means to be. Making this rhythmic movement in and out of the plot isn't something that's easily done. To pull back and talk in broad terms about life means temporarily sidelining characters we want to see more of (I'd guess all of us have experienced this in novels that follow the points of view of multiple characters: we enjoy or identify with one or two more than the others, and we want to spend more time with them, and when attention shifts to another character, as much as the story may still be good, we none-the-less can't wait to get back to our favourites). It also radically changes the pace of the plot. And yet, Kay manages this deftly, giving us enough time with the characters to grow to love them (mostly), and then pulling back in such a way that we don't resent it, because those general meditations on life become a kind of literary gentle hand on the shoulder, helping us understand how we feel about what's happening and how these events illustrate the way of the world, and telling us it's okay to feel the way we do.

As for the characters themselves, in his usual fashion, Kay teases us with a supporting cast who walk into and out of the story briefly (and yet are three dimensional, believable, and have the power to make an emotional impression on the reader) either to engage the clutch of protagonists and then go about their lives, or, in some cases, to start down important paths, only to die. As much as we may want to see more of some of these characters (Give me more Ambassador Orso Valerii! Who else pictured him as a younger Londo Mollari, still unburdened by a life of political failures and the long, slow retreat of a dying empire?), the richness of their brief appearances makes Kay's world more believable, and gives greater weight to the actions, thoughts, and feelings of the protagonists, as well as the movements of the world they have to deal with. And, of course, the protagonists themselves are as fully rounded as people you'd meet in your life (moreso in some cases). You may not know a Danica who's looking for the first opportunity to go out with a bow and arrow and execute everyone from a certain country/faith that she holds responsible for the deaths of her family, but you probably do know a young person who's driven towards a certain goal and is prepared to make any sacrifice necessary to get it. You may not know a Pero Villani on his way to paint the portrait of a foreign leader who could kill him, but you probably do know someone who's been manipulated by leaders and managers for their own ends, who will suffer even if he doesn't make the wrong move, while the powerbrokers who put him in that position remain untouchable. We learn where these characters come from, see how their situations have shaped their attitudes and goals, and watch as they grow over the course of the story — or beyond, throughout their lives, as each character's story is tied up. Not necessarily neatly — there is real, aching heartbreak in one of the story threads that you wouldn't necessarily expect. But these people's lives are all concluded believably.

I also loved the little throwaway details scattered throughout the book that helped make the world of Children of Earth and Sky feel bigger than just the story, older, and more complete. Things like the little references (in the form of artifacts, and at least one character) to the Byzantine-style empire of the previous era detailed in Kay's other books. There are the two moons. Or the ring of blue fire in the depths of the palace, or the spectral voice in the old temple, reminding us that Kay's world is a place where ghosts are real, where there's still magic (if fading magic at that) and that as much as it might seem like our Earth in the past, it isn't. Not quite.

The success of Children of Earth and Sky is that you don't want it to end, and yet, you find yourself content with its ending. Again, it's that narrative hand on the shoulder giving a reassuring squeeze because endings are a part of life, but another part of life is being able to look forward to the next story from Guy Gavriel Kay.

Mini Reviews 9 - Monsters and Gods

Five books in this mini review batch, all dealing either with monsters of some kind or gods — or both! From xenoprions to werewolves to dinosaurs to various deities, and people who surf the line between godhood and monstrosity, the books I was reading from the end of the summer until just a couple of days ago encompass the whole spectrum.

Get the rundown on The Dinosaur Lords, Valkyrie's Song, Tesseracts 18 : Wrestling with Gods, Aurora, and Licence Expired - The Unauthorized James Bond.

And, as usual, these reviews come with a warning: Here there be spoilers.


The Dinosaur Lords, by Victor Milan

Remember when you were a kid and you and your buddies would reach into your toy box and grab... whatever, and just start playing? GI Joe's Cutter (having wrecked the Killer W.H.A.L.E.) and one of the Centurions might have to build a labyrinth of wooden blocks to outwit Darth Vader (all pissed off and looking for trouble because he doesn't have his vinyl cape or light sabre anymore) riding a Crystar lava dragon. Or Boba Fett might get into a slugfest with the Fisher-Price cowboy to see who gets to keep his horse. Or, if there were girls in your group of friends, He-Man and a squadron of Space Lego pilots might have to help Barbie defend her motorhome from a legion of Playmobile knights and their Weeble Wobble shock troops? Yeah you did. And it was fun as all hell.

Victor Milan's The Dinosaur Lords is just like that — a wonderful, geeky mashup of armoured Medieval-style knights and dinosaurs. Really, it doesn't get much cooler than that.

The story takes place on the world of Paradise (with hints that it could be some kind of distant future colony world or experiment of Earth's) where humans (though not quite Earth-normal humans) who live in a feudal society do what humans living in feudal societies usually do: vie for power, but with the added advantage of being able to harness the gigantic brute might of dinosaurs. Local lords and their knights clash swords and lances atop everything from traditional warhorses, to hadrosaurs, to ceratopsians, and even allosaurs and tyrannosaurs, while peasants struggle to keep out from under foot and survive. In the background, there is the dimly-perceived threat of the legendary Grey Angels, creatures who, in the service of the Creators, have occasionally been known to come to the lands of humans and wreak destruction. The story begins in the empire of Nuevaropa, where a rebellion is put down, only to have the seeds sown for the overthrow of the ruling dynasty. Rob Kerrigan is a dinosaur trainer/keeper, soldier, and bard who finds himself out of work after the battle, and eventually falls-in with Voyvod Karyl, a great general from the losing side who now has taken a job to help a group of utopian aesthetics defend their colony from the depredations of a local lord. Meanwhile, in the royal court, Princess Melodia watches in frustration as her father, the emperor, is manipulated into making bad decisions and allowing the ambitious young Duke Falk (back in the service of the crown after betraying his former partners in the rebellion) to catapult through the ranks at court, even as her lover, Jaume — the only noble who might be able to stop Falk — is sent away to lead another military campaign that gets increasingly out of hand.

I'll give Milan a lot of credit for putting this story together. It would be easy with this kind of setting to just give us a one-dimensional sword-swinging romp, or a palace intrigue full of forgettable moustache-twirlers, but even as he serves us all of the fun stuff we'd expect from a knight-and-dinosaur mashup, the author still gives us fully flushed-out characters with who deal with their circumstances in believable ways, such that even as we're enjoying the fun of the larger scenario, the reader takes what's happening to the protagonists very seriously. Which is important, because not everything that happens to these people is fun — some of it is downright horrific — and if they weren't well-rounded, the things they have to endure wouldn't have the emotional impact to make us take the story seriously.

I also enjoyed the little details of the world Milan has created: everything from the colloquial nicknames given in passing for dinosaur breeds (such as "fatties" to refer to a type of ceratops filling the niche of cattle), to the very well thought out ways that different kinds of dinos are used in warfare (hadrosaurs as heavy cavalry, triceratops standing in for war elephants, raptors as attack dogs and tracking hounds) and the tactics one would use them for, to the exotic fashions of the nobles who strut about court in brightly-coloured saurian feathers rather than silks (putting me in mind of ancient Middle- and South American empires). It's also a refreshing change for Nuevaropa, the dominant power in the region, to have a Spanish cultural and linguistic influence, rather than the English or French that's typical in fantasy literature.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't highlight the wonderful sketches of dinosaurs by Richard Anderson at the start of every chapter. His lines give a terrific sense of explosive movement, while his use of shading in the basic black and white of the drawings creates a sense of dangerous shadow enveloping these monsters, even as it emphasizes their size. I'd almost like to see Anderson publish a companion book of illustrations — not just of individual dinosaurs, but also of whole scenes from the dino battles, and the world in general —once Milan has completed the series.

How much did I love The Dinosaur Lords? Let's just say I'd brave the jaws of a T-rex to get my paws on the sequel, The Dinosaur Knights, right now.


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Valkyrie's Song, by MD Lachlan

The life of an ordinary English peasant during the early days of the Norman conquest was not easy. For Tola, having to flee, starving, into the cold wilderness after Norman soldiers killed her family was bad enough. But in doing so, she's discovered that under certain painful circumstances, she can commune with the Norse gods, thanks to the presence of one of Odin's runes within her. It's a talent that's made things worse: Tola's rune has attracted a Byzantine witch who's bent on taking all the runes for herself to resurrect the dead god, a quest that brings her — and her fierce Viking guards — to the north to kill the young woman. If that wasn't enough, a werewolf is stalking the land, and not just any monster: Fenrir, the divine wolf tasked with slaying the gods during Ragnarok. And the wolf has its eye on Tola too.

Valkyrie's Song is the latest instalment in MD Lachlan's saga about humans and gods trapped in a cycle of pursuit, torment, death and resurrection in the Viking era. As Odin and Fenir lock horns again and again over the long years, the humans who are their vessels and witnesses try to come to grips with their curse, and possibly break it.

Like the other books, Valkyrie's Song picks up decades after the previous installment (Lord of Slaughter), where the woman fated to be the love interest of the man doomed to become Fenrir has again reincarnated. This time she is the farmer's wife, Tola, and her stress at being harassed by the Normans acts as the psychic beacon which attracts the wolf and Odin's minion. While the narrative perspective rotates between several protagonists (Tola, the witch, the witch's Viking shieldmaiden bodyguard, Loys the werewolf, and a Norman lord distracted from harrowing the Saxon north by the rune curse), Tola is the main focus of this story — a change from the other novels where the werewolf tends to be the dominant perspective. This emphasis on Tola is a good decision on the author's part, as it's easier for the reader to identify with her than the other characters. To be clear, Lachlan has done an excellent job of making the other characters three-dimensional and very human — figures that we can identify with when we look at who they are and what their circumstances represent: the witch who wants power, long life, youth and knowledge; Loys the werewolf who struggles to cope with, and maybe overcome a terrible condition that controls his life; the shieldmaiden who's just trying to support the person she loves; and so on. The shieldmaiden in particular is a very sympathetic character. And yet, for all of that, it's easier for us, as modern readers, to identify with Tola, who (for most of the novel, anyway) is just a normal person struggling to survive as she's alternately pushed and pulled by huge, dangerous forces beyond her control, or trying to avoid them. She's more familiar to us than a witch, sword-wielding warrior, or werewolf/godling could ever be. Her ultimate transformation at the end tells us, metaphorically, that it is possible for a normal person to overcome these greater forces, with the warning that this empowerment is a change in self rather than a simple triumph, and one that comes at great cost.

Valkyrie's Song is also different from the previous books in that the characters of the witch and werewolf come into the story (or return to the story, as the case may be) not as reincarnates who've had all knowledge of their previous experiences wiped and have to rediscover their circumstances (like Tola) but rather as the same people from the previous era, now immortal (somewhat) and coming forward into the new cycle with full knowledge and more sophisticated agendas. This adds more complexity and tension to the story, even though less time is devoted to their point of view.

But for all its strengths in characterization and imagination, the story is weak in the one scene where it — as a dark historic fantasy novel — should be strongest: werewolf versus zombies. Near the end, the witch raises an army of the dead to capture Tola and kill anyone with her. Luckily for Tola, Loys is tracking her too, and his love for her (or, at least his love for her meta-soul through the ages), along with his determination to prevent the witch from uniting Odin's runes, sends him charging to her defence. The set-up for a collision between a god-wolf and an army of undead would have any fanboy slavering in anticipation, but Lachlan denies us the satisfaction, giving the fight a brief mention before shifting back to Tola's flight. Sure, the past three books have entertained us with plenty  of scenes of carnage as Fenrir (in various stages of transformation from human host to giant wolf thing) tears through opponents, and yes, this story is more about Tola's journey and transformation (the title of the book is, after all, Valkyrie's Song) because the wolf has already had his day, and, admittedly, it's a battle that really has no influence on the outcome of the story, but come on! WEREWOLF VERSUS ZOMBIES! This monster mash-up is just too huge to gloss over! A few more paragraphs, or even a short chapter (and the chapters in this novel are short enough already to allow it) to give us a full blow-by-blow would have done the trick, but no such luck. This was the only time in the entire series that I've been disappointed with Lachlan's plot choices.

Overall though, the book is well put together, with pacing that tears along like a marauding Viking band sacking a fishing village on its way to a monastery. It's a grim study in how people deal with fate and the choices that make us human — or not.


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Tesseracts 18 — Wrestling with Gods, edited by Liana Kerzner and Jerome Stueart

I wanted to love Tesseracts 18. For years, this anthology series has been the premier (at times, only) collection of Canadian short speculative fiction. Time was, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the next  instalment. But over the past few years, it's become hit and miss. There have been Tesseracts books that not only didn't contain a solid line-up of great stories, but were downright forgettable. Now, each year, I hope for a return to the glory days when I can finish the collection, put it down, and say "Wow!" in a good way. Sadly, it didn't happen this time.

Wrestling with Gods wasn't a terrible collection. There were a few good stories in it, like "The Harsh Light of Morning" by David Jon Fuller (you wouldn't think it possible to make the Residential School Program more horrific, but this story succeeds), or "Summon the Sun" by Carla Richards (which felt like a good Connie Willis story), or "So Loved" by Matthew Hughes (which didn't go in the direction I thought it would), or JM Frey's "The Moral of the Story", or "Chromatophoric Histories of the Sepiidae" by James Bambury, or Savithri Machiraju's "Ganapati Bappa Moriya!" — in fact, the entire back half of the book was good. Not especially memorable, but enjoyable and interesting.

But the first half was weak. Too weak. Every other story in the first half of the book seemed to leave me wondering why it had been included. And while it's good to finish an anthology on a high note, if you don't have a strong opening followed by consistently good choices, it's hard for a reader coming it at for the first time to justify slogging through in hopes of maybe finding something worth while later on. You may disagree. Everyone's got different tastes in literature, and maybe Tesseracts 18 — Wrestling with Gods will be like a gift from the heavens for your book shelf. For me, it was more like a decades-long trek through the desert to get to, well, not exactly the promised land.


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Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson

At first glance, master of hard science fiction Kim Stanley Robinson takes a hard look at the ideas of generation ships and interstellar colonization in his newest work, Aurora. Narrated by the titular ship's AI (a narrative choice that's reminiscent of Robert J Sawyer's Golden Fleece), the story begins with the colonists aboard a generation starship headed towards a (relatively) nearby solar system, trying to maintain both their environmental/biological balance in a closed system and their vessel's mechanical systems as they close in on their destination. And those efforts are proving to be increasingly problematic as the years go on: the birth rate is declining, the new children don't seem to be up to the health standards of the previous generations, bacteria are starting to outpace the colonists' ability to deal with them, and mechanical systems are starting to wear out. Among the younger colonists is the chief engineer's daughter, Freya, who initially is feared to have no practical aptitudes, but soon demonstrates a knack for being able to get people to communicate, both with her and each other. Freya falls into the role of unofficial shaman, wandering the ship's different habitats, learning a little general knowledge about its different operations, and developing a deep understanding of its people. As the story progresses, the colonists have to deal with the harsh realities of trying to set up a colony in another solar system with no likelihood of help from Earth, the dangers of their failing shipboard systems, health hazards (from their own relentlessly mutating bacteria and an alien prion), civil war, the risks of a voyage home, and the reception from a civilization that hasn't thought about them in years. It's a tale that paints a pretty bleak picture about the notion of setting out to spread humanity among the stars, reinforcing the need to protect an Earth that our species probably needs more than we fully appreciate.

But that's not what the story is really about.

We're told that the narrator is the ship's AI (or group of AIs), chronicling the story of the Aurora at the request of the chief engineer. Initially, its style is simple, mechanical, and objectively factual as it zeroes-in on details (some of them painfully, unnecessarily specific). Gradually though, it softens its approach as it adopts Freya as its primary focus, becoming more interested in her experiences and who she is, and more intuitive in its portrayal of her. We see the AI begin to develop emotions (such as annoyance at the colonists during the civil war, along with a shade of smug imperiousness) and introspection (during its long, stretch on the trip home when everyone's hibernating, there's a moment where it seems less like HAL 9000 and just a touch more like Red Dwarf's Holly going mildly batty out of loneliness). And then, near the end, we're shown explicitly that our narrator is entirely unreliable. When the narrator (which you'd think, being an AI, is the most reliable narrative source you could have) describes Freya watching the destruction of the Aurora and then continues the story of Freya's experiences on Earth, the reader —knowing that the narrator/AI is inextricably a part of the ship — is forced to doubt every single fact of the story. A no point is there made any mention of an afterlife (biological, AI, or otherwise), nor is the AI copied to another host. And yet it continues to tell the story of things that happen after its destruction. And if we conclude that the narrator/AI is making up everything that takes place after its supposed death for artistic purposes, we can't take anything in the previous parts of its story for granted either. Taking this thought to its ultimate conclusion, we're forced to ask whether we can even believe that the narrator is even the ship's AI at all.

So if all of the details in the story are thrown into question, what's it really about?

Aurora is about how we are made human by the act of telling a story. By continuously changing and improving the way it tells the story as the story progresses, as a means of better engaging the human audience it's trying to connect with, the AI itself evolves and becomes more human. It develops from something a little more sophisticated than MU-TH-UR 6000 from Alien, to something more self-aware and feeling — probably equivalent to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey — to ultimately something much more: maybe not the slightly daft Holly of Red Dwarf, or the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, or the crotchety Nell from Battle Beyond the Stars, but at least something — someone — more akin to the more sensitive HAL 9000 from the end of 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Aurora tells us that even as we make the story, it makes us. The making of the story — the struggle to put thought into words, to communicate in a meaningful way to another mind, to impose meaning on the universe (even if that meaning is communicated through fiction) — makes us human.

As with The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson has shown us in Aurora that beneath the hard details of a straightforward, factually grounded story, there are deep layers of meaning about the human experience.


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Licence Expired — The Unauthorized James Bond, edited by Madeline Ashby and David Nickle

If the theme for this set of mini reviews is monsters and gods, and this blog as a whole is dedicated to speculative fiction, what's a collection of short stories about James Bond doing here? Bond's world of gadgets and of super villains concocting elaborate and often impractical word-dominating-or-destroying schemes from extravagant lairs ranging from mansions to volcanoes while employing armies of flunkies and monstrous henchmen using strange signature weapons or execution methods are all familiar to SF fans. Bond himself is unhuman in his ability to withstand torture and injury — repeatedly — that would kill most people outright (including the punishment of his own body through high levels of alcohol and tobacco consumption), to tirelessly do feats of physical prowess, to assimilate endless languages and abilities, to keep Lady Luck at his side in any casino, and to get pretty much any woman he wants any time he wants without any real consequence. While Fleming's original books may be somewhat more grounded than the movies they inspire, it never feels like much of a leap to get to the realm of sf, and sometimes there's no leap at all. As to monsters and gods, Bond is both: clearly a god among assassins and spies, but monstrous in ability to kill and inflict pain without remorse, to think only of his own satisfaction in indulging in the pleasures of the earth — and specifically in his treatment of women, which don't seem to rate much higher in his mind than the food, alcohol and cigarettes he consumes. To that end, it couldn't be more appropriate to talk about Bond on this post.

And so we get to Licence Expired, a collection of new short stories about 007 and his world, inspired by Fleming's original works and made possible only because of copyright laws in Canada (a notion that itself seems ripe for some sort of Bond story about rogue publishers — maybe with eye patches, or diamond-encrusted elbows, or henchmen riding turbo-powered pogo sticks — flouting the law by hiding out in some differently-legislated country as a means to bring the world to its knees). It's a collection that is one of the most entertaining books I've read in the past year.

It's hard to pick out favourites from The Unauthorized James Bond because the stories were all so good! Really, it was a pain worse than Jaws' stainless steel orthodontics having to put this book down sometimes, instead of continuing on to the next story, and many of them are worthy of a 00 designation. Some were more rooted in conventional reality, like the opening shot by Jacqueline Baker, "One Is Sorrow", about a woman who meets a very young James; or Bond's rescue of a kidnap victim in EL Chen's "Half the Sky"; or Claude Lalumiere's "You Never Love Once", about a mob enforcer's encounter with an aging 007; or "Not an Honourable Disease" by Corey Redekop, also about a run-in with the spy in his later years. Others whole-heartedly adorn themselves with science fictional trappings, like the virtual reality prison in Kelly Robson's "The Gladiator Lie" (with that gleefully gory, unforgettable line: "The assassin's skull opens like a book..."); or Ian Rogers' post-apocalyptic "Two Graves". And then there's everything in between, like Charles Stross' wonderful neocon super villain harangue "No, Mr. Bond!"

Whether you're a Bond fan or not, if you live in Canada, buy this book. If you don't live in Canada, find yourself a secret agent or an amenable super villain and get this thing sent to you via robotic groundhog or other overwrought covert means. After all, you only live twice: once to read this review, and once to read the actual collection.