Friday, March 15, 2024

A Night in the Lonesome October (Roger Zelazny)

A Night in the Lonesome October
Roger Zelazny
William Morrow and Company
Fiction, Horror/Humor
*** (Okay)


DESCRIPTION: Full moons have power, as does the night of Halloween. When the two coincide, great and terrible things may happen... depending on who involves themselves, and whether they stand for preserving the world or opening doorways to elder gods who may destroy everything. The dog Snuff, loyal familiar of cursed sorcerer Jack, has been through these events more than once in his long life, but this year's convergence in the English countryside already has unusual hallmarks, drawing all manner of strange characters and their own animal familiars. Before, Jack and his allies have managed to keep the elder entities at bay, but this time, dangerous newcomers are violating nearly every rule and custom to ensure that they fail, and even a loyal familiar like Snuff may not be able to save the day.

REVIEW: This is one of those classics I keep meaning to get to, generally at a more seasonably-appropriate time (this being a very springlike mid-March, with the novel taking place over the 31 days of October), but it's understandably harder to secure the audiobook though the library in autumn. In any event, I'm not sure if it would've been notably improved by the proper atmosphere, for while the prose could be amusing and there are some very interesting and imaginative ideas and images at play, the whole starts feeling less like its own horror tale and more like a fanfic mashup of various gothic figures familiar from page and silver screen, to the point of distracting absurdity.
The narrator, Snuff, makes allusions to the histories of himself, his master (who, though never explicitly named, is clearly Jack the Ripper as well as a very long-lived sorcerer), and the October ritual that may or may not end the world. When not protecting his master on nightly jaunts for spell ingredients, he's protecting the master from various entities contained in various parts of their home (such as the "Thing in the Circle" that keeps trying to tempt Snuff to free it by transforming into various exotic lady canines, and the often-threatening "Thing in the Wardrobe" up in the attic) and keeping an eye on the other local "players" in the coming "game". As part of the latter duties, he develops professional relationships with the other masters' and mistresses' familiars that range from friendly to antagonistic; the cat Greymalk, familiar of local "mad" witch Jill, is perhaps his closest friend, even when they realize that their keepers are destined to stand on opposite sides of the conflict.
At first, Snuff views it all with a certain weary familiarity. This isn't his first supernatural rodeo, after all. But when dead bodies turn up near his house, a wild card turns up in the form of a neighbor with a wolfish secret who may or may not be a player, and other oddities (such as a detective and his portly companion poking their noses into things) shake that complacency, Snuff starts feeling his first sense that maybe master Jack won't come out on the winning side come the end of October. The strongest parts of the story are Snuff's interactions with his fellow familiars, underlings with their own agendas that may or may not coincide with the humans they serve. The humans, on the other hand... despite what Hollywood and many comic book "multiverses" seem to insist, there are only so many disparate "worlds" and rules one can throw together before it just starts getting a bit ridiculous. Here, there's Jack the Ripper, Count Dracula (who keeps a company of stereotype "Gypsy" followers, not the only trace of unfortunate dating in the book), Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Larry Talbot (the Wolfman), Doctor Frankenstein and Igor and the Creature, and numerous others I didn't recognize off the top of my head but which were clearly lifted from other works. They draw too much attention to themselves and clutter the game board until the game itself is almost an afterthought. As a result, the climax feels weirdly muted, too surreal to even begin to care about the stakes or who wins or loses, with a bit of a deus ex machina thrown in the middle. The ending just kind of shrugs the whole thing off with a glib final line that doesn't even fit what we readers were told earlier about the consequences for whoever loses the contest (not really a spoiler if there's not really a point).
This is the second swing-and-miss for Zelazny for me, so I'm pretty sure he's just not an author I'm equipped to really enjoy, for all that I can appreciate some of the writing and the concepts. He may be an inspiration to many in the genre, but for me I fear he's just too dated and not my cup of cocoa.

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The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (John Joseph Adams, editor) - My Review
At the Mountains of Madness (Howard Phillips Lovecraft) - My Review
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Thursday, March 14, 2024

The Lost Words (Robert Macfarlane)

The Lost Words
Robert Macfarlane
Anansi International
Fiction, CH Poetry
***+ (Okay/Good)


DESCRIPTION: When the Oxford Children's Dictionary was updated in 2007, several words were removed as no longer relevant to young readers, replaced with more modern terms related to technology. Acorn, newt, raven, willow... their loss hinted at a loss of nature, a loss of connection to the green world beyond the classroom. With these poems inspired by the missing words, Robert Macfarlane hopes to reforge that connection and spark the sense of wonder that the natural world can bring, even in the internet age.

REVIEW: This is a case where the presentation - in this case, the audiobook - had a distinct impact on the rating. The poems themselves are decent, if a bit variable in quality and content. (I also wonder how much a kid who didn't already know and appreciate nature - particularly the nature of the English countryside - would get out of some of them.) But the audiobook insisted on inserting long lulls between the poems full of birdsong and natural sounds. They comprised at least a third of the total runtime; I timed more than one as longer than the accompanying poem. There's adding atmosphere, and there's just plain overkill... I think this one would work better in the original format, as a picture book with illustrations by Jackie Morris, but as I listened to the audiobook, it's the audiobook version I must review.
(As a closing note, I wonder why the original word definitions weren't included, either with the poems or in an afterword. Wasn't half the point to re-introduce those words to children's vocabulary?)

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The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity (Mac Barnett)

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity
The Brixton Brothers series, Book 1
Mac Barnett
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, MG Humor/Mystery
**** (Good)


DESCRIPTION: Steve Brixton may just be a kid, but he already knows what he wants to be when he grows up: a private detective. He already knows everything he needs to know about sleuthing and catching criminals thanks to his favorite book series, the Bailey Brothers, and their handy guide for aspiring young detectives, The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook. All he needs is a case to get him started... but he never expected to stumble into one thanks to his social studies class, of all things, and certainly not researching the history of American needlework for an eight-page essay (due Monday). When he tries to check out the town library's only book on the subject, all heck breaks loose. Suddenly, he's on the run from both the librarians - really a secret society of elite agents that makes the FBI look like Cub Scouts - and the law, with everyone convinced he's an undercover private eye working for a mysterious figure known only as Mr. E. The only way to prove he's not a real detective is to find Mr. E for himself - a dangerous caper that might stump even the famed Bailey Brothers.

REVIEW: A tongue-in-cheek riff on boy detective series like the Hardy Boys, The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity pits a young would-be detective against intentionally over-the-top baddies in a twisty, turny plot that both leans on and tweaks familiar tropes. Steve thinks he has what it takes to be a real, live crime fighter, and even outsmarts his mother's new cop boyfriend by cracking a burglary at the dinner table, Encyclopedia Brown style (not that the man believes him, or appreciates the boy showing him up). But it's one thing to read about the fictional Bailey Brothers stalking smugglers and dodging gunfire, and a whole different thing altogether when armed men are breaking through the library windows hunting him down for trying to check out an old book on quilts. Still, Steve has his notebook, his mail-order official Bailey Brothers detective badge, his handbook for young detectives, and even his magnifying glass (which is apparently a vital accessory to any private eye, though he only figures out a use for it later on), and it's not like he has a choice about taking the case when the case is literally dropped in his lap... and when failure means either being hauled off to jail as a national traitor or taken away to a secret compound by the shadow organization of librarians, which might be even worse. Of course, one thing he knows from his reading is that every good detective has a "chum", or partner, though his best friend Dana isn't exactly thrilled to be drug into the role of sidekick, and even less thrilled by Steve calling him "chum" all the time, which in a modern coastal town is more often associated with fish bait than with partnership (the Bailey Brothers aren't exactly a modern duo). Through a combination of pluck, cleverness, sheer luck, and beneficial failures, not to mention a handbook that sometimes is more hindrance than help, Steve manages to make his way through the tale, though not without several setbacks and contusions. The whole manages to be amusing, delivering chuckles and thrills and intentional ridiculousness.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Neanderthals Rediscovered (Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse)

The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science is Rewriting Their Story
Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse
Thames and Hudson
Nonfiction, Anthropology/Archaeology
***+ (Okay/Good)


DESCRIPTION: Neanderthal. Caveman. Ever since the first discoveries of primitive hominins and early reconstructions, these terms have been tossed around as pejoratives, expressing brutish stupidity and dinosaur-like obsolescence. The proof, of course, is that Homo sapiens has survived to invent the very archaeology that renders our extinct relatives as inferiors. If we weren't smarter, weren't stronger, weren't faster and more clever and overall just plain better and more blessed beings, we'd be the bones in the caves and they'd be the ones excavating our tools and wondering about us, right? In recent years, new discoveries and investigative techniques have upended nearly everything we thought we knew about Homo neanderthalensis, the iconic "caveman" relatives who once spread across Europe and Asia before disappearing into the mists of time. Just what were Neanderthals like? Where did they come from and why did they vanish... and is there anything other than old bones and stone tools left of them today? And, given what we've learned, is it really fair or accurate to treat their name as a synonym for stupidity?

REVIEW: In the foreword, the authors mention that the book was supposed to have gone to press earlier than it did (in 2015), but that various factors ended up holding it up... and even in that brief delay, much of what they'd written had to be rewritten, or at least adjusted, to account for new discoveries, breakthroughs, and theories. I can only imagine where things stand in the scientific community in 2024. Even when it was published, though, it was clear that popular cultural images of the Neanderthal as a knuckle-dragging, club-swinging, misogynistic monster was about as accurate as the Flintstones in depicting our prehistoric ancestors and relatives. From missteps in early reconstruction and investigations to biases on race (and species), the history of prehistoric investigations has wended its way slowly and circuitously toward something approaching the truth, though of course we probably will never know the whole truth unless time travel becomes a thing (and fiction informs us that that's frankly more trouble than it's probably worth). The authors recount both the history (as understood) of the human/hominin diaspora that created Neanderthals, early "modern" humans, and other relatives known and unknown, and the history of discoveries and theories that have shaped our understanding of our lost kin. Sometimes the recitations can feel a bit dry and technical, and once in a while it seemed they were dismissing or downplaying hypotheses and ideas without really getting into why, but overall it paints a fascinating, if naturally (sometimes frustratingly) incomplete, picture of a lost species that was far more like us than many H. sapiens are comfortable admitting... for if we allow that Neanderthals were also capable of many of the things we think of as exclusively ours, that they were not obviously or inherently lesser beings, we might have to consider that we, too, could follow them into oblivion with the next roll of the evolutionary dice.

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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

The Art of Prophecy (Wesley Chu)

The Art of Prophecy
The War Arts Saga, Book 1
Wesley Chu
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)


DESCRIPTION: It was the prophecy that founded a religion, that gave the beleaguered nations hope, that justified exorbitant expenditures of time, effort, and cold hard liang coins once the child was found: the Prophecized Hero of the Tiandi and Champion of the Five Under Heaven, who would rise to slay the Immortal Khan of the Grass Sea and end the relentless raids of those barbaric Katuian people upon civilized Zhuun lands. Thus was young Jian raised in a luxurious palace, surrounded by bodyguards and servants catering to every whim, trained by the best war artists in every possible manner of combat... and utterly incapable of winning a fight against so much as a child, let alone the Khan. Aging windwhisper Taishi, long past her prime, despairs when she discovers how spoiled the hero-to-be has become, how greed and corruption have turned his training into a mockery. She determines to do her best to salvage the situation - until the Immortal Khan is killed by someone else, rendering the prophecy obsolete and Jian a political liability.
Jian doesn't understand it. As far back as he can recall, he's been the glorified chosen one. He's learned everything his exalted masters have taught him, struck every pose perfect as a painting, won every practice match he's ever been in - and never questioned why. Only the one-armed old hag of a war artist who plucks air currents like harp strings doubts his prowess... but when the very people who once praised him try to kill him in his own garden, only that old hag defends him, whisking him away from Mute Men assassins and bounty-hungry shadowkills. Faced with the very real possibility that not only was his entire life a lie but that he may not actually be a good war artist, Jian finds himself staring into a bleak future... but the prophecy may not be quite as obsolete as everyone believes, and the Champion of the Five Under Heaven may yet be needed to save the land.
The Viperstrike warrior Sali has served the moving cities of the Grass Sea and the Immortal Khan himself with unwavering loyalty. She even bears a piece of his Will within her, a fragment of soul that beckons her when the Khan's too-mortal body is struck down. Tradition compels her to lay down her life, to return that fragment of the Khan's will that it may be reborn in a new body... but with the land-chained Zhuun armies destroying her people, Sali defies her sacred duty to become a Soul Seeker, to find the Khan's new vessel and unite the Grass Sea against the enemy. Once she has found him, she'll gladly die and return his piece of soul to him - but destiny may have another fate in mind for the warrior.

REVIEW: Warriors who can step through shadows or ride upon winds or even blur time, a "sea" of moving, living plants where cities rove upon great wheels, a prophecy that appears to have ruined more than it promised to save, and a collection of characters left to pick up the pieces and figure out what went wrong and why nothing seems to be going right... Chu blends magical martial arts with a well-imagined world and flawed yet interesting characters in this amusing epic adventure
Starting with Taishi discovering just how far astray the coddled would-be hero has been led by advisors and trainers more interested in their own glorification (and purses) than with saving Zhuun from the Immortal Khan's people, the tale takes several surprising turns. Jian, naturally, undergoes some much-needed growing up by being literally chased out of the lap of luxury and into the harsh reality beyond the palace walls... not quite as much growing up as one might expect by the end, in some ways, but he is still young and has a lot of botched upbringing to erase before he can truly become anything like a proper hero. Taishi, for her part, sees just enough promise in the boy to keep from giving up on him - just as she's not convinced that it's the prophecy that failed, a journey that leads her to the heart of the Tiandi religion and some surprising revelations, not to mention some new allies and enemies along the way. Steadfast warrior Sali of the Grass Sea has dedicated herself fully to her people and her Khan - especially when a childhood best friend became the new incarnation of the Katuian ruler after the previous one passed away. She eats, sleeps, and breathes tradition... yet finds herself defying not only the shamans but her own soul's pull toward death when she decides that she can serve the Grass Sea better by finding the new Khan amid the postwar chaos than by committing suicide in the temple - the first of many clashes she'll encounter with truths and rules she once considered as solid and unquestionable as the sun and three moons in the heavens. Further complications come from Quisimi, an ambitious (if not entirely mentally stable) shadowkill mercenary who means to make a name for herself and her crew by taking down the ex-hero and his traitor protector, the windwhisper war artist Taishi. They all have their parts to play in the unfolding saga, all facing conflicts that force them to reexamine their loyalties and beliefs and long-unquestioned assumptions.
The tale moves decently enough, with plenty of action, many exciting fight sequences and fascinating settings, some emotion and drama, and more than a touch of humor throughout, though sometimes it feels like it's not quite covering as much ground as it seems it should be given the page count, if that makes any sense. I wasn't entirely certain I'd read over five hundred pages worth of story when I reached the end, for all that I generally enjoyed it and look forward to where the saga goes from here.

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