Reviews of Fitzgerald, Feeley, Kressel, Morrison, Fraser, etc.

Recent Substack Posts

Here are some recent reviews I've done on my Substack.

Human Voices, by Penelope Fitzgerald

The Mills of the Gods, by Tim Powers

Cumberworld & Farther, by Gregory Feeley

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Golden Hill, by Francis Spufford

Moth, by James Sallis

The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow

The Rainseekers, by Matthew Kressel

Mr American, by George Macdonald Fraser

Replanted Review: Deepdrive, by Alexander Jablokov

Replanted Review: Deepdrive, by Alexander Jablokov

by Rich Horton

[I wrote this back in 1998, when the novel came out. I haven't revised it at all (save for a few bracketed additions] so what I say about the author is very out of date. It turns out that Jablokov took an hiatus from writing (or at least publishing) for nearly a decade after this novel appeared, Since he retunred, in 2006, he has published one more novel (Brain Thief (2010)) and quite a few shorter stories, which have continued to be very interesting.]

Alexander Jablokov's new novel [as of 1998] is Deepdrive.  I've been a fan of Jablokov's ever since reading his first short stories in Asimov's a few years ago.  I really liked his first novel, Carve the Sky, which was "baroque" and artsy, and his third novel, Nimbus, a kind of post-cyberpunk story.  And I've liked a lot of his short stories.

Deepdrive is his latest.  It's an Avon EOS hardcover, and I'd like to praise Avon for their practice of publishing lower-priced books.  Their pbs have been $3.99, and now I've seen a couple of hc's, in smaller packages, for about $15.  I think this is a good approach. [That comment didn't age well!]

Deepdrive itself is set in a busy, well-imagined future.  The solar system is occupied (mostly benignly) by several different species of aliens: the Bgarth are burrowing on Venus, assisting with its terraformation; the Gunners are on Mercury, shooting at the Sun; the Ulanyi are on Earth, living in symbiotic relationships with nomadic human tribes.  And there are plenty more.  But none of the aliens will give humans the secret of the "deepdrive", which allows faster than light travel.  An alien from another species, the Vronnans, has showed up, apparently a refugee from his own people, and he is holed up on Venus.  Rumor says he wants to be rescued, and he might have something important, even a deepdrive, to trade.  Sophonisba Trust assembles a team, somewhat ad hoc, to go after the Vronnan.  The novel follows her and the members of her team, as well as the Vronnan, as a series of disasters propels them willy nilly towards learning more than they might want to know about Vronnans, the lost Martian slowship interstellar expedition, their own motivations, and how Ulanyi, Gunners, and other aliens tie into this.  And also, maybe, the secrets of the deepdrive.

It's all pretty cool, and well-imagined, distinctly "Sterlingesque" (particularly reminiscent of some Shaper-Mechanist stuff, like "Swarm"), and certainly exciting, and yet ...  It never quite won me over.  I dunno why.  Maybe it was too hard to follow all the threads.  Maybe I didn't quite believe in most of the characters (Soph was well done, also her ex-husband Lightfoot, but I was never convinced by the beautiful lesbian Ambryn Chretien or the big bodyguard Elward Bakst, both of whose motivations and abilities seemed to change to whatever the plot required).  But, I'm sort of worried, is my "Sense of Wonder" dulling?  What I mean is, I think maybe 20 years ago all the cool stuff, the aliens, the biotech, the plots within plots, would have overwhelmed me and carried me along.  And it didn't do that for me now.

On balance, I'd still recommend Deepdrive.  But I can't give it full marks. [Which may have been more my fault than Jablokov's!]

Reclaimed Review: Declare, by Tim Powers

Reclaimed Review: Declare, by Tim Powers

I'm reading Tim Powers' The Mills of the Gods just now, and I thought maybe I should repost something I wrote about him. Alas, I didn't write a full review of The Anubis Gates, by far my favorite of his books, when I read it long ago. Indeed, I find I haven't written much about him! But I did write this review, way back in 2001. (Indeed, I posted it on SFF Net on August 30, 2011 -- a terribly innocent time, in retrospect, with an event pending that could probably prompt a Powers-like book, far enough in the future -- it's still too soon now.)

Declare opens with a brief scene featuring a British Intelligence Captain driving a Jeep down Mt. Ararat in 1948, fleeing the deaths of several of his comrades. Then we switch to 1963, and we meet Andrew Hale, who, we learn soon enough, was that Captain in 1948.  He's a lecturer in  English at a University, but his past in Intelligence has caught up with him.  He's told by secret means to meet with his mysterious supervisor/recruiter at the shady, unofficial, branch of the British Intelligence that he has been a member of, and he learns that he is being provided with a rather uncomfortably cover -- he's being charged with treason and murder, which will make his flight to Kuwait and subsequent offer of his services to the Soviets more credible.  The real reason for all this is that in 1948 his mission was to foil whatever the Soviets were trying on Mt. Ararat -- but while he managed to foul up their plans, they also fouled up his plans, in part due to the treachery of Kim Philby, so that the potential for the Soviets to achieve what they want remains -- and now, in 1963, they are ready to try again.

From there the story proceeds on multiple timelines.  We learn in flashbacks of Hale's past -- his mysterious birth in Palestine, his Catholic upbringing by a single mother in the English countryside, his recruitment into a curious side branch of British Intelligence and his first assignment -- to let himself be recruited as a Soviet agent, to work in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1941. In Paris his partner agent is a beautiful young Spaniard named Elena Ceniza-Bendiga, and she and Andrew fall in love, but she makes clear that her first allegiance is to international communism.  So when the Nazi's find them out, and they escape and are ordered to Moscow, presumably to be killed as blown agents, he ducks out on her and returns to England, where he learns, more or less, what's really going on.  

There follow episodes in Berlin in 1945, where Hale meets Elena again, as well as Kim Philby, the highly placed spy who Hale has always disliked and mistrusted.  The three meet again on Ararat in 1948, when Hale learns conclusively that Philby is a traitor, and also becomes convinced that Elena has learned to hate him.

A parallel path follows Hale's adventures in the Middle East in 1963, as he manages to get recruited by the Soviets for there new attempt at -- I won't say what -- on Mr. Ararat.  This involves trips to mysterious cities in the desert, meetings with curious entities, and another meeting with Elena and with Kim Philby, who has finally been exposed publically as a spy, and who is looking for escape -- either to France or Russia.  Finally, as we have known, the strange operation called Declare will be resolved, one way or another, on the slopes of Mt. Ararat, near a curious long buried wooden object -- perhaps a ship.

The book is always intriguing, and full of clever supernatural ideas.  The central supernatural entities here are djinni -- which Powers links to fallen angels.  He ties this in with the true stories of Kim Philby and his father, and with T. E. Lawrence, and with some mysterious cities in the Arabian Desert, and with meteorites, and spies, and Catholicism.  I found this all well-imagined, and consistent and comprehensible in a way that, for example, the ghosts in Expiration Date never managed to be for me.  There is also the love story between Elena and Andrew, which is well-told and very well resolved, but which didn't fully work for me, as the emotional element of it never quite came to life for me.  I think the other slight weakness in the novel is a certain implausibility in some of the spy stuff -- basically, it seemed to me that Hale's cover would never have held up as well as it did -- the Russians would have got just a bit skittish, and shot him out of hand.  Not that I'd know.  Powers also manages to work in some of his other recurring themes -- poker, and the injured hero, for two.  It's a very solid effort, just a whisker short of being exceptional, and it takes a place in my pantheon of Powers' books at the second level -- below my favorite, The Anubis Gates, but ranged somewhere with The Stress of Her Regard and On Stranger Tides as among the next best.

Rediscovered Review: Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah Ross

I resurrect another review of a rather nice original anthology from a small press, back in 2008. This review originally appeared in Locus, as a Divers Hand review.

Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah J. Ross (Leda (an imprint of Norilana Books, Winnetka, CA), ISBN: 978-1-934169-91-9, $11.95, 307 pages, tpb) February 2008

A review by Rich Horton

“Lace and Blade” is a term coined by Norilana publisher Vera Nazarian, for a sort of romantic subset of Sword and Sorcery: stories where the duels are as likely to be with wits as swords, and where women are as likely as men to wield swords (not to mention wits!). And here is a book composed entirely of such stories. Stories resembling older novels like The Scarlet Pimpernel – or newer novels like Swordspoint. I have to say first that this subgenre fits my tastes: I read more Georgette Heyer and Baroness Orczy than Conan in my formative years. And I add, then, that Lace and Blade delivers exactly what it promises; almost every story satisfies, with plenty of color and passion and wit and magic. I’m not sure any story transcends its mold: and so nothing here pierced me like Richard St. Vier’s rapier, but I really had fun.

A particular highlight is Sherwood Smith’s novella “The Rule of Engagement”, in which a woman is kidnapped by a man who hopes to marry her, and must find a way to engineer her escape without causing political issues, or harm to the man’s retainers. The story is satisfying in its scope, and hints at a fascinating backstory … all part of a grand fantastical history that Smith has been elaborating since childhood, and which is the source of her excellent Inda novels for DAW.

Tanith Lee’s “Lace-Maker, Blade-Taker, Grave-Breaker, Priest” is also great fun – on a ship journey, a couple of swordsmen take a sudden inexplicable dislike to each other, to the point of proposing a duel. But a shipwreck intervenes, and the real story is eventually made clear on the (mostly swordless) island at which they end up. Most readers will see quickly the shape of the story, and the twist, but it remains a delight getting there.

Two stories very nicely use Spanish settings. Robin Wayne Bailey’s “Touch of Moonlight” has a Lady encountering an outlaw – rumored to actually be a ghost – while on a journey to ransom her younger brother. By the end, supernatural beings have been encountered – as well as, of course, more naturally beastly humans. In Mary Rosenblum’s “Night Wind”, a young man is being pushed to a marriage he fears will be loveless, in order to save his family’s fading fortunes. But the mysterious rider called the Night Wind may change his ideas … again, the reader will recognize immediately what’s going on, but the story still satisfies.

Dave Smeds, in “The Beheaded Queen”, features the most interesting main character, as indicated by the title. And her fate is treated uncompromisingly – her interest is seeing to the future of her son. Madeleine E. Robins’s “Virtue and the Archangel” reminded me just a bit of her wonderful Sarah Tolerance novels (how I wish a publisher would pick them up so she could write more), in telling of a woman led by circumstance to a not very respectable job as a private investigator – here she helps an old school friend to recover a lost jewel.

The other stories come from Diana L. Paxson – an effective tale set in Brazil; Chaz Brenchley – sort of a pendant to his novel Bridge of Dreams, involving enough but perhaps just a bit too much a side trip and not its own journey; and Catherine Asaro, whose story was the only one here to really disappoint me.