Review: Agyar by Steven Brust

As one can tell from (most of) the other posts on this blog, there is a big science fiction lover in this duo. It's not me, but I’ve recently begun to dip my toe in the fantasy pool. Living with a sci-fi/fantasy collector, it was inevitable that I might start poking around the shelves in the library or have a few choice novels gifted to me.

Agyar was a gift last Christmas, and I finally decided to pick it up just before a trip to Spain in October. I knew I would want to read on the plane, and since I tend to pack heavy, a smaller, lighter book seemed the best choice. Smaller book as it may be, I was not prepared for how much of a story was held in those 254 pages!

We’re aware from the get-go that our, well, antagonist, Jack Agyar, is a certified creep, but we’re not exactly sure of his motive. He preys on young, beautiful women with whom he leaves pale and sickly after lovemaking, and lives in an abandoned house whose only other inhabitant is a ghost. He’s also being set up to take the fall for a mysterious string of murders committed by a former lover. And all of this is told to the reader through a series of indirect, journal-like entries written on a “typing machine” Agyar found within the house he’s squatting.

Because the book never explicitly states the overall theme, I will remain mum on further details as well. This was my first Brust novel, and now I recognize firsthand why my partner adores the author so much. Even within a narrative centered on a seemingly dangerous fiend, there are grounding moments of contemporary social narrative and laugh-out-loud sarcastic observations:

“I’ve heard women, and, lately, some men, talk of women acting stupid to please men, but in fact, I think, that is not what they are doing; it is not a lack of wit or intellect that shallow men crave, it is lack of personality; they desire a woman who will exist only as a shadow to themselves, because this gives them the illusion that they have some importance, that they are more than cattle. Personality is what distinguishes us from each other, what makes each man an woman unique, and to submerge one’s personality is to make one’s self interchangeable, like a mass produced commodity…”

“…but we suddenly noticed that everyone else had left and the busboy, a college-age kid who’d gone to the Art Garfunkel school of hair fashion, was giving us significant looks.”

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick, thrilling read, and a great entry point into the rest of Steven Brust’s work.

- Chelsea

More But I'd Rather Be Reading! here.

Finding: The Epic Fantasy

I'm no stranger to the strange lands of epic fantasy. I was raised by Harry Potter when I was a boy, encouraged by Wheel of Time enthusiasts throughout, and stumbled upon The Shadow of the Torturer in my adolescence. In fact, so thoroughly have I immersed myself in as many epic fantasies as possible, there's hardly been an occasion that I haven't had a book larger than my head held in my hands. It was never the (often) gorgeous cover art that caught my attention, though! Oh no. Rather, it's always been the heft of these volumes, embossed by author names that proudly spanned the widths of the cover pages and surging as if tides or perhaps a breeze in tall ancient trees, that's drawn me to the promise of unlimited magic within. Time and again, I've found myself learning new magic systems, struggling to make sense of ornate cartographic wonders improbable and glorious, yelling at obvious plotting and ham-fisted dialogue or passages of exposition, amazed that I committed to volumes that could break digits, and afraid it will all end before there is any more.

And then I've thrown a few epic fantasy novels out of windows.

Yes, I have defenestrated more bricks of paper than I can say anyone should be proud of. I would like to avoid naming names, but that's kind of against my point here: it is difficult to find an epic fantasy novel worth the time and energy they consume. Sometimes, you wind up with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time and you are so damned curious as to what he has in store that you begrudgingly pick up another copy of the first book to see if you can't talk yourself out of it all all over again. Other times, you've gone a hundred or more pages into one of Gene Wolfe's Sun novels and suddenly there's an altruistic character that is really a ghost or else, no, wait, that chapter ended three chapters ago without telling you what was happening and it happened while other stuff happened and this is you trying to make sense of it in your head before you get to the next stopping point. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the devilry that is a good epic fantasy novel that doubles as a caper that you couldn't possibly unravel on your own because that would spoil the whole ride! You're meant to keep your arms and legs in at all times, to really go with the story, if you're going to be able to enjoy the sheer nonsense of it all. You don't want to hit your head on whatever's on the path ahead of you or be grabbed at by whatever lurks just outside your peripherals.

There is always nonsense aplenty, be it ghouls that have no business meaning so unwell toward children, monstrous creatures that you are constantly drawing and redrawing in your head as the author describes the mayhem that is engulfing your heroes, or wizards that shouldn't have so much of a say as to the song your heart sings when the harp strings of it are plucked. Really, nothing in an epic fantasy novel is going to make any real sense if that book doesn't get out of your way and get behind you instead.

You could say I have a love-hate relationship with the genre. Often, it's drivel that has more upon approach than it does upon immersion (looking at you, Game of Thrones) or more adolescent male fantasy garble that doesn't know when not to take itself seriously (hi, The Sword of Truth.) And yet there's eloquence and genuine artistry where you least expect it (Mistborn, Broken Earth.) Before too late, you've discovered humor and wit (Vlad Taltos, Gentlemen Bastards) and honesty (Kingkiller, Bas-Laag) Why not poke about for alternate history that doesn't pretend the world is something else but imagines an entirely new world (Green Bone Saga)? Except maybe I'll wind up with something more in-between all of these like Earthsea or Stormlight Archives (which, really, is saying too little about these books and too much about what isn't really wrong with them.) I am forever revisiting this genre to capture the perfect escapist journey: the epic fantasy.

I will rate and recommend a few of those that I dig the most, if you'll permit me to say one irrefutable thing, readers. I do not hold with any novel that attempts to bludgeon its readers into submission with a thematic point that renders its story both arbitrary and silly. If an epic fantasy book has more to say about saying something than it does with allowing you to suspend disbelief long enough to learn something for yourself about your capacity to observe and empathize with the real world, then that novel has failed to be worth a damn!

I highly recommend:

• Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere (I was introduced to Mistborn and I've been devouring his incredible repertoire ever since.)
• Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Long Sun, Short Sun as well as his Latro novels (profound, puzzling, profoundly puzzling!)
• Patrick Rothfuss is doing wonderful things with his Kingkiller Chronicles (gorgeous)
• N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy (it's nothing you expect and so much more besides)
• Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series (quick wit and very inventive that plays with genres for the fun of the story being told)
• Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea 
• Elizabeth Bear's The Lotus Kingdoms and Karen Memory

I've left off things I am unsure of my opinion on (Wheel of Time, Avalon, Harry Potter), but I stand by what I've said about authors not getting in the way of their own stories. I find and lose and find again these epic fantasies, and I intend to do so so long as I live. I hope you will too.

- Frank

Review: Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

A novella is best defined as, or described to be, a short book. In my opinion, the best novellas don't read like long short stories or quick novels. Rather, the ones I find myself coming back to are written with such precision and enthusiasm that between the world building and the plot you find yourself forgetting each of those aren't themselves characters when suddenly it's over. A novella makes me want more, but I don't feel shortchanged when it's done right.

Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall is a novella that tells the bone-chilling tale of a teenage girl and her mother trapped on what can most poorly be described as the worst camping trip ever. You see, Silvie's dad has some very firmly held beliefs with regard to his wife and daughter's place, and less regard for them than his fascination with ancient Brits. Dark things happen in the woods, and Silvie may very well have to fight through these terrors if she hopes to come out of this family vacation alive.

I don’t know a better word to describe the crafting of this wonderful novella than “beautiful.” This horrifying and brief flurry of pages is brilliantly paced. Ghost Wall's every detail and moment drives towards inevitable violence with a precision and a tone each fully capable of sending chills down the spine of any psychological horror enthusiast (or casual reader!) The story asks several very exacting questions of its readers, but ultimately we are made to wonder: what is man’s violence and how willingly does it separate its victims (women & children) from time and place? This is a traumatic and carefully written piece of fiction that I know I’ll be revisiting more than once.

- Frank

More But I'd Rather Be Reading! here.

Review: The Book of the Long Sun: Lake of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe

Lake of the Long Sun continues Patera Silk's quest to recover his manteion (church) from the clutches of an aristocratic crime-lord. Along the way, he'll somehow get through an exorcism that quickly turns into a pulp murder mystery, complain a lot about walking in the heat of the day, and make a dramatic run through a series of tunnels that reveal his world is a generational starship (really, this is a throw-in-the-towel word on the back cover synopsis, and I don't want you to think knowing that will ruin your ability to read this book and be just as awed and inspired by Wolfe's command of narrative as you should be.) There's a lot more standard science fiction fare in Lake of the Long Sun than there was in the first novel, but that's just the fun!

The bulk of this novel is world-building. Wolfe wants you to feel what Silk can not possibly understand: this place is a massive man-made vehicle to preserve life en route to another planet, but it's been in operation for an unknown space of time and, between the people surviving in the Short Sun whorl and the machinery and operations of the ship breaking down and being salvaged by unwitting survivors, it's not looking like it'll be a place anyone can survive on for much longer. Does Silk realize this? No, not yet, and never as such. But then, he's just beginning to learn that the lust and overall corruption of mankind is never simply the fault of someone who sins. (Yes, these novels are thematically steeped in the spiritual teachings of Christ.) Can Silk learn that his love for people and his hope for them to improve and live better lives means more than simply adhering to the rules and living with his nose to the ground all while cyborgs try to kill him for stumbling into government conspiracies to trap mankind on a dying ship in space simply to indulge their own desires to be immortal gods?

In my previous review of the first book of the series, I wanted to make clear that Gene Wolfe is never a casual read and I'm trying to sort out the mysteries of this tetralogy while enjoying his mastery of prose and command of narrative. Mr. Wolfe was a very dense and intricate writer who was extremely fond of using archaic words and unreliable narrators, as well as cliffhangers, to challenge his readers to look for the story they wanted to read in his work. It's still difficult, even after this re-read, to explain what's so brilliant about Lake of the Long Sun, but I can tell you a lot about what is brilliant: There's so much play between subtle and blunt exposition, the world-building Wolfe so effectively crafts and cultivates through dialogue and dizzying twists and turns in the plot, that, on the surface, as with all of these novels, makes little sense. Do some exploring in the tunnels, in the deeps, of the Lake of the Long Sun, and you'll find that amid all the swashbuckling bravado, death, and espionage intrigue, there's a science fiction story that has a lot to say about misogyny, government, religion, the breakdown of how a society may forget its history and its technological capacity, and the makings of a hero.

Again, if you're looking for a straightforward science fiction novel, you won't find that here. Have a dictionary handy, or else be ready to do some encyclopedic research for fun, because Lake continues where the first book left off and goes nowhere you expect it to: no matter how obvious every single character in the book says the plot to be, the reader is in for a wild ride that doesn't let up even after it's over. Happily, there's two more books.

- Frank

More But I'd Rather Be Reading! here.

Review: The Book of the Long Sun: Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe

This is my first time re-reading The Long Sun, and I think it must be said that these books definitely benefit from multiple readings. Now, I must note here that Gene Wolfe passed away on April 14th, 2019 and, while I've been reading and rereading his novels and short stories since I first encountered Shadow & Claw at 14 years old, I have rarely been called to a book the way The Long Sun beckoned to me on the nights following the news of his passing. I must have read this tetralogy when I was about 16 years old and even then I knew I was missing a lot of what was ultimately a very simple story: in some far-flung future, in some unknown place in the universe (Maybe our own? Likely not?), mankind clings to life in an O'Neill Cylinder (space colony) alongside androids, and one priest becomes the unlikely crusader in the quest to bring the population of that space colony to the planet(s) they are orbiting. I remember a fair bit about women being forced to conceive and give birth to livestock and pet creatures, nuns with robotic parts breaking down, a chaste hero that happened to know how to talk his way through even the worst of hostile and baffling situations, and something about space vampire-bodysnatchers. I know I was thrilled by it all as I thrashed feebly in the deep end of a dark pool of water. These books taught me to swim the waters of Gene Wolfe's particular brand of speculative fiction. (And particular does not begin to describe one of the finest writers in this or any other genre. Wolfe's massive body of works continues to baffle and impress readers the world over with his trademark flourishes of suspense, understatement, symbolism, and uncanny ability to tell stories within stories within stories.) So, what do we have here? How do we go from treading water to doing laps?

O'Neill Cylinder Rendering [Credit: NASA Ames Research Center, Artwork: Rick Guidice]

My initial read of Nightside was a bit of a head-scratch: there’s intrigue here, but it does read like a book that demands that you get to the sequel. With that said, having read this tetralogy and the Short Sun, Nightside is a novel loaded with world-building and it introduces the themes of these books with a masterful sense of pacing and deliberation. As with most of Wolfe’s works, nothing is handed to you for free. Reading Gene Wolfe is much like having multiple brain teasers set up in front of you and you’re going to figure them out as you go but you have to pick a couple of them to juggle as you do so. Wolfe wrote for readers that love to read, and Nightside is no exception. If you're looking for a simple science fiction story, go elsewhere.

Wolfe has a brilliant time establishing pace with this entry novel: the bulk of the action and story here takes place within the span of a few days! Rather than relying solely on exposition, Wolfe does a lot of world-building with the characters in this novel. Where many fiction writers would resort to allowing action to carry the plot forward, much of the narrative is actually hindered by violence and excitement. I've read many a complaint that Wolfe gets repetitive with introductions to certain plot devices like characters getting lost, but I have less patience for people who don't enjoy reading than maybe those readers that aren't reading so much as skimming.

Thematically, this novel isn't one thing or another. Rather, Nightside is many themes interwoven and doing battle and unwittingly intermingling. For example, Wolfe can very abruptly and heavy-handedly meditate upon the notion of how unreliable our narratives are in that what we read or interact with in the world or even how we tell our own stories can never really be the truth of it all even though our own perspectives are valid. With that said, Wolfe deliberately tells us, the reader, that while we as people may dispute truths, there is always the constant of morality that dictates what is right versus everything else (of which each is its own thing, rendering black and white arguments farcical, cynical and anti-human: that which is not right is not necessarily evil or corrupt, even if it is not right.) Wolfe takes specific care to give us this lesson as it pertains to the notion of parsing memory for truth. He tells us very bluntly that in telling a story, we may lose a detail, or misattribute a memory, and that makes the story incorrect but is not the same thing as telling a lie.

Please try to understand that it is difficult to explain what this book is about by giving you a synopsis. Gene Wolfe demands that his readers really dive in and explore this novel, and it would be unfair to say that Nightside is anything less than a science fiction story that offers a portrait of a possible future in which humans have forgotten what makes them human, as they have forgotten that they were once planet-bound and can not thrive enclosed in space in a massive enclosure of technologies they can no longer maintain, let alone replicate. Nightside the Long Sun is worth the word count, and you'll be right to want to start on the immediate sequel Lake of the Long Sun.

- Frank

More But I'd Rather Be Reading! here.

Finding: All the Lovely Bookshops in London

At the beginning of this month, I spent a week in London. I’d been planning the trip since the fall, and in the midst of sketching out my itinerary, I made sure to pick out several bookshops to browse over the course of my stay. I rented a flat around the corner from the British Museum in the neighborhood of Holborn, in the borough of Camden, which put me within a four-block walking radius of several booksellers.

First was The London Review of Books shop, right on my corner, complete with its own tea shop and outdoor seating area, and home to a vast range of genres and book review quarterlies. (The London Review of Books is published fortnightly). I popped in three times over the course of the week.

In the opposite direction was the Atlantis Bookshop, an independent shop specializing in magic and the occult, tarot cards, incense, and various other related accoutrements. The shopkeeper, dressed in silky garb, with purple hair and a row of stars tattooed over her left eye, was having a conversation on the phone, and I happened to over hear a snippet: “If they had any sense at all they’d bask in your reflected glory and get on with it!”

Bookmarks, another shop in the immediate vicinity, specializes in left-leaning, social issue-focused, and occasionally radical texts. I noticed there were flyers posted in the windows for various social causes, and books by and for every racial minority, women’s issues, and so much more.

Venturing further out into London, I made a special trip west to Marylebone to find Daunt Books, perfectly catered to my taste for travel writing. If the collection alone wasn’t enough, the space itself boasts gorgeous oak architecture and an enormous vaulted skylight, making browsing their extensive selection of writing from and for every place imaginable even more cathartic with the sunlight streaming through. [Note: I experienced surprisingly good weather in London.]

On Sunday, in the midst of a trek around the East London neighborhoods of Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, and Spitalfields, in the boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, I sought out and stumbled upon a few more shops. Making my way southwest from the Columbia Road Flower Market, I wandered down a neat little side street covered in murals and found Artwords Bookshop. With books and magazines on contemporary visual culture, fine art, graphic design, and fashion, I felt as though I discovered a treasure trove. I slowly perused their selection, pouring over books about keeping things fresh as a graphic designer and how “selfie culture” and the infiltration of photography into our everyday lives has reshaped our perception of the world around us.

Later, I found Brick Lane Bookshop, which was unfortunately much less interesting than I’d expected, amplified thanks to the crush of crowds swirling around the market tents up and down the street outside. Down the block, I checked out Rough Trade East’s selection of pop culture related titles, and a table of casual reader’s staples inside Old Spitalfields Market.

One of my last stops was the famous Notting Hill Book Shop. Never having seen the namesake movie myself (I know, I know), I at first found it odd that a small group of tourists were taking turns snapping selfies in front of the shop, but soon realized what I was I missing when I spied a wall of film paraphernalia inside. The selection was fairly ordinary, and I was soon pushed out of the way by a delivery service dropping off a dozen boxes of books.

Honorable Mentions:

The massive Forbidden Planet London Megastore had the most extensive sci-fi section I have ever witnessed. I even made a video of it for Frank so he could witness the magnitude.

The last stop on my Muggle’s Tour of London (of course I booked that!) was in the middle of Cecil Court, the inspiration for Diagon Alley. Famous on its own for book shops, I counted seven: a few antique and rare book sellers, a children’s shop with a poster of the illustrated version of Harry Potter right in the window, and Watkin’s Books, longtime seller of spell books, among other things.

So, dear readers, the moral of this travel story is this: you needn’t go far in London to find a bookshop that will cater to your tastes and fill you with whimsy.

- Chelsea

More But I’d Rather Be Reading! here.

Review: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

If I’m honest, the whole notion of a “children’s book” confuses me. The brevity of language employed should not decide what is age appropriate, and content should never be vetted for what is worthy for an adult as something a child doesn’t deserve. I understand that thematically and narratively there are stories that work well for, or are otherwise intended for, a specific audience, but to a declare novel “for children” rather than trusting the readers to engage with a narrative told from the perspective of a child or else for that of a child seems to me a very cynical way to approach reading and a less than respectful way to treat children and the literary development of a child.

The Rithmatist is about a teenage boy named Joel, impoverished and largely unexceptional (as many teenage boys frequently must confront as they come of age), more interested in becoming a rithmatist and their ways than pursuing academic excellence. Suddenly, children have started disappearing, leaving only blood and lines of chalk behind. The missing children are rithmatists: humans with the ability to bring chalk drawings to life and do combat with these with only the aid of schooling and a piece of chalk, tasked with growing up to hold the line against wild “chalklings” (errant chalk drawings hell-bent on attacking everyone in the United Isles of America and overrunning these island nations that make up our heroes’ country). Joel manages to get involved in the investigation, but he may have bitten off more than he can chew when he comes up against evil forces he can himself do nothing to stop, without the help of a delinquent and reluctant girl named Melody and that of a disgraced professor as timid as he is brilliant. Can he solve these murders before more children are attacked? And, really, what is a rithmatist? And will Joel be able to join their ranks?

I had a lot of fun with this “children’s book.” Sanderson sets up a wonderful story that is both brisk in pace and tonally appropriate. The Rithmatist is chalk full (forgive the pun, if you will, readers) of drama and action. The main characters can be forgiven for being mostly unexceptional and mainly fodder for exposition because Sanderson’s world-building and character development skills dance for us beautifully before all is said and done. Joel and Melody play with our antagonists with precision and tenacity, really allowing us, the reader, to believe in the urgency of this story and what’s at stake. As for the antagonists, these mysterious characters hold far more promise than the protagonists insomuch as intrigue is concerned, and that’s par for the course where most of Sanderson’s works are concerned. Overall, this is a good read that does not disappoint!

- Frank

More But I'd Rather Be Reading! here.