Review: Some Trick, by Helen DeWitt

Review: Some Trick, by Helen DeWitt

a review by Rich Horton

Some Trick is a collection of thirteen short stories (and one prefatory poem) by Helen DeWitt, who is best known for her brilliant 2000 novel The Last Samurai. On reading The Last Samurai I immediately realized I should read anything else she's published. I have since read her sly novelette The English Understand Wool, and now this book. There is another novel, Lightning Rods (2011), and a third upcoming later this year, Your Name Here, written with Ilya Gridneff. The books published to date are all available from the venerable small press New Directions (though The Last Samurai first appeared from another publisher, who seems to have been very difficult for DeWitt to work with (partly due to corporate mergers.)) The new novel will be published by another outstanding small press, one of my favorites: The Dalkey Archive. (DeWitt's difficulties with publishers seems to inform some of the plot of The English Understand Wool, and also might inform bits and pieces of the stories in Some Trick.)

The stories in Some Trick cover a wide variety of subjects, mostly touching in some way on the arts. The voice is varied as needed throughout but is always recognizable as DeWitt's. I'm not sure of the provenance of most of them -- one, "Climbers", appeared in Harper's in 2014, and three are dated "Oxford 1985" so presumably date to her time at Oxford, where she got her doctorate. (I will say that I find the habit of literary publishers refraining from giving original places of publication for stories in collections quite annoying.) The collection itself appeared in 2018.

On the whole the book is a delight. If there is any flaw -- and this is less of a flaw than an ambiguous virtue -- it is that in the weaker pieces a sense of cleverness (and DeWitt is very clever indeed) may be the main thing a reader takes away. But the best pieces are thought provoking, intensely enjoyable, sometimes very funny indeed, and sometimes quite powerful. The arts dealt with are varied too -- visual arts, books, music, even math. (Which, really, also describes The Last Samurai.)

As to the stories, very briefly: "Brutto" concerns an artist who finds herself approached by a crazy Italian man who wants her to make a number of copies of a suit she had made as a youthful apprentice as a dressmaker, and exhibit them as works of art. And for financial reasons, and artistic ambitions, she can't resist. It'a almost a satire of the art scene, but stays just short of that, and I liked it a lot. "My Heart Belongs to Bertie" is a rather astonishing little piece about a mathematician, and statistics, and publishing, and computer programming -- this is the sort of thing only DeWitt, it seems to me, could pull off. "On the Town" is about a young man from Iowa who ends up rooming in New York with the disaffected son of a wildly successful writer of children's books, and -- well, it's hard to describe but it's a madcap ride through some wild financial maneuvers and a guy from the sticks falling in love with New York and, well, it's very funny. "Remember Me" mixes a famous Jewish writer, a Church of England canon who wants a Jewish man to participate in VE Day services, and a young woman friend of the writer's fiancee who is writing a novel herself. This one didn't fully work for me. "Climbers" is also about a famous writer, and a couple of people who are sort of obsessive fans of him in different ways, and a project to try to get the writer's latest book published in the US -- which tells you nothing about the story, which is more about some offbeat characters, and about publishing -- and I thought it absorbing. 

"The French Style of Mlle Matsumoto" switches from publishing to music -- a brief story of a famous French pianist, and a Japanese woman who was herself an exceptional Chopin interpreter -- an about the Second World War and antisemitism and eventually about, perhaps, musical influence passing down generations. But nothing so banal. "Stolen Luck" is also about music -- about a rock band and their drummer and a photographer and an unexpected hit song and -- it's amusing but minor in among DeWitt's work. Back to rock music for "In Which Nick Buys a Harley for 16K Having Once Been Young" -- in this case a band in 1970 making a US tour and falling apart due to, I suppose, creative differences, or a slimy producer. "Plantinga" is back to visual art -- the title character is a photographer, and this short story quickly covers her life and a few of her works -- there's no describing it really, but it works. (Maybe the Lem and Calvino references make it work for me!) And finally "Entourage" is one of my favorites, about a man trying to collect books with different letters in them -- so from different languages with different orthographies -- and it goes on to a project to hire associated to carry his suitcases full of books -- and then somehow to the founding of a restaurant change. And to a bunch of guys named Josh. And a Lem reference again -- well, kind of the same Lem reference. The story is bonkers but great weird fun.

I said "finally" but I skipped the three Oxford stories. To me they have a slight different feel, and the cleverness is definitely front and center. They are all still solid work, if sometimes seeming a bit unfinished. (But I suspect entire finished in DeWitt's mind.) "Improvisation is the Heart of Music" features Edward and Maria, who as we meet them are newlyweds embarking on a honeymoon -- an old-fashioned honeymoon through Europe by boat-train. And Edward tells stories, which Maria has heard before. And which pretty openly are derived from The Count of Monte Cristo. "Famous Last Words" is conversations and seduction -- with mentions of structuralism and advanced math, and characters named X and x, and -- it's very clever, and sexy in its way. In "Trevor" Lily and Trevor talk about art, and about beauty, and prettiness, and Botticelli and a possible Gainsborough, and perspective. It has a certain mystery to it -- perhaps the most successful of these three stories. Though, really, even if I imply they are not finished -- maybe I am wrong, as I certainly was intrigued by all of them.

I haven't, I think, done a good job saying what these stories are really like, and probably with a writer like DeWitt you simply have to follow her. The words are important, the rhythm, the ideas -- and a way of balancing ever present irony with the certainty that serious matters (in most cases) are being treated. It's fascinating work, and even the lesser stories compel reading. 

Review: Miss Mackenzie, by Anthony Trollope

Review: Miss Mackenzie, by Anthony Trollope

by Rich Horton

I continue my reading of the immensely enjoyable mid-Victorian writer Anthony Trollope. I have so far mostly concentrated on his two most famous sequences of novels: the Barsetshire Chronicles and the Palliser (or Parliamentarian) books -- to date I've read the first four Barsetshire books, and the first two Palliser books. The only other Trollope novel I have read is one of his very last, The Fixed Period, a minor work that I read only because it is science fiction. I figured perhaps it was time to read one of his other non-series books, but one more in his main line. I have two on hand: The Claverings and Miss Mackenzie, and I chose the latter.

Miss Mackenzie was published in 1865. Trollope wrote it right after The Small House at Allington (1864) (second to last of the Barsetshire books) and Can You Forgiver Her? (1864-1865) (first of the Palliser novels.) As with many of his contemporary-set novels, it shares characters with his other books -- in particular, in this book we see the lawyer Mr. Slow, of the firm Slow and Bideawhile, who shows up in Doctor Thorne and several other novels; as well as Lady Glencora Palliser, who is a major character in the Palliser books and also appears briefly in The Small House at Allington, and even Griselda Grantly, an important character in Framley Parsonage who also shows up in several other novels. (It's interesting that the Lady Glencora we see in Miss Mackenzie is much more like the powerful society woman of Phineas Finn (and presumbably later Palliser novels) than the rather uncertain of herself character in Can You Forgive Her?, though to be sure events in that novel make it clear by the end that she is finding her footing.)

Trollope stated that he wanted to write a book without a "love" plot, and in so doing he chose for his main character an "unattractive old maid". But as even he noted, he couldn't help himself, and Miss Mackenzie does indeed find love. Also, any attentive reader will note that Miss Mackenzie is actually quite attractive, though her initial poverty and long years spent nursing her ailing brother might have disguised that, and also will note that while she was an "old maid" by Victorian standards, she is only in her mid-30s at the time of action of the book.

The novel opens with the death of her sickly brother Walter, and the revelation that Miss Margaret Mackenzie has inherited a modest fortune -- worth about £800 a year. This was completely unexpected. She resolves to live independently in the town of Littlebath (a spa town clearly modeled on Bath), taking her niece Susanna with her and providing for her education. She is quickly importuned with marriage proposals from her one time lover* Harry Handcock, and her cousin John Ball. She rejects both, in part as the proposals seem motivated by a desire to have her money, not any feeling of love. In John Ball's case, while she rather likes him, she is very conscious that the Ball side of the family had never got along with the Mackenzie side, in part because the very money Walter had passed on to Margaret was given him by John's uncle Jonathan. John resents this very much, and his rather nasty parents even more. Likewise, her other brother Tom (Susanna's father) and his wife feel that they deserved the money -- though Tom had used his half of Jonathan Ball's inheritance to invest in a now failing business, Rubb and Mackenzie. 

Once in Littlebath, Miss Mackenzie establishes herself in a nice place, and contemplates with to become part of the "church" set, a group of ladies who attend the services of an evangelical minister named Mr. Stumfold; or the more social set, led by her neighbour Miss Todd. At the same time she finds herself importuned by Tom Mackenzie's partner, Mr. Rubb, who wants her to lend their firm £2500. And then Mr. Rubb, who is good looking and youngish (about Miss Mackenzie's age) begins to court her. But his vulgarity stands against him -- and also, we quickly learn, his dishonesty. Mr. Stumfold's curate, Mr. Maguire, also sets his ery on Miss Mackenzie. This "unattractive old maid" has quickly received four marriage proposals!

All this less than half way into the novel. Miss Mackenzie is tempted by some of the offers, but between a feeling that all of her suitors love her money more than they love her; and a feeling that she want to be romanced, and wants to truly love her husband; she rejects them all. And things get complicated -- her brother Tom suddenly dies; and a question arises about her inheritance -- was the will that gave Walter and Tom Jonathan Ball's money really valid? So Margaret must navigate a good deal of misfortune with nothing but her steady honesty and virtue on her side. 

This description possibly doesn't sound very promising, but it misses what the novel is really like. For one thing, it is essentially a comic novel, and it shines with a number of comic scenes -- some of them really just set pieces (as with the bazaar for the benefit of "Negro soldiers' orphans" (the Civil War was ongoing as Trollope wrote, and there was interest in providing for the children of freed slaves whose fathers had died fighting for the Union)) and as with an unfortunate dinner party Mrs. Tom Mackenzie attempts to put on. Others are part and parcel of the plot -- the vicious behaviour of Lady Ball, the hypocritical attitudes of Mr. Stumfold and his flock, Miss Mackenzie's landlady and her cigar-smoking husband-to-be; and the satire aimed at the "Christian" newspaper to which Mr. Maguire contributes libelous articles. Miss Mackenzie is an admirable character for who we root, and her suitors are a much weaker lot but either humorously unfit, or realistically weak but plausible. 

I don't think the novel ranks among Trollope's best works -- it's better than The Fixed Period but I have to say I've preferred the Barsetshire and Palliser novels I've read so far. But Trollope is always -- at least so far! -- entertaining, and this book is worth reading. I read it in Oxford World Classics edition from 1988, with a pretty good introduction by A. O. J. Cockshut (whose last name, alas, could almost have been a Trollopian coinage!) The novel doesn't seem to have been well-received on the whole, and it wasn't reprinted for almost 60 years after the first two editions appeared in 1865 and 1866. 

Resurrected Review: The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Resurrected Review: The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri

by Rich Horton

This is a review of Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, that I wrote back in 2006 or so. I should add that my potted bio below is obviously out of date. Lahiri has published more novels and stories since then, and, most notably, has lived in Italy since 2012, and has been writing it Italian, including a novel, Dove mi trovo (2018) (published in English as Whereabouts.) I haven't really kept up with her writing, except for the occasional story in the New Yorker, though I will say I quite enjoyed the most recent such story I saw.

So -- what I wrote in 2006 follows:

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in England, to Indian parents, and grew up in Rhode Island. So it is perhaps not surprising that her subject, so far, seems to be the problems of Indian immigrants in assimilating. (Or that one of the main characters in her first novel, The Namesake, is a woman born in England to Indian parents who grew up in Massachusetts and New Jersey.) This is a fertile subject area for interesting fiction -- but I have to say, I'm thinking maybe she should branch out a bit. [And I should add that she definitely has "branched out" since then!]

Her first book, the story collection Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize. I first encountered her work with a story called "Gogol", in the New Yorker. I found it wonderful -- the best story published in the New Yorker that year. I soon learned that "Gogol" was an excerpt from a novel, her first, The Namesake, which was published in 2003 to considerable acclaim.

I have finally got around to reading the novel. And I have to say that it mostly lives up to my impression based on the short story -- but not quite fully. I suspect the problem -- a mild one -- is that Lahiri has not quite learned to structure a novel. The Namesake is somewhat episodic, and I don't think it is fully successful as a "novel" -- but as a reading experience it is ultimately quite satisfying.

It is in the main the story of the life (through early adulthood) of Gogol Ganguli, who is born in 1968 in Boston, to Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli. Ashoke is a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at MIT. He and Ashima are Bengalis from Calcutta, and their marriage was arranged in traditional fashion. They have been in the US only a year or so when their child is born. His unusual first name is intended to be a nickname -- taken from Ashoke's favorite author. His grandmother is expected to suggest his real name, but her letter gets lost between India and the US, and they are forced to put Gogol on their boy's birth certificate.

The novel then takes several jumps to describe Gogol's life: his childhood, spent mostly in the US, with occasional long trips to India; his college career, at Yale and Columbia, where he becomes an architect; several love affairs -- in college with an American girl, then a strange sort of affair, including living together, with a very privileged American; then an affair with a married woman; and finally a semi-arranged relationship followed by marriage to another Indian -- a girl he had met as a child. Gogol -- who eventually does take a "real" name, Nikhil (related of course to Nikolai Gogol's first name) -- is a fully realized character, and very much an American born in the US with an identity split between his Indian heritage and his American life.

I liked it quite a bit, with as I have said some reservations about the overall structure. I also felt at times that some of the middle of the book, in particular, was a bit pat -- convenient -- things seemed to happen in Gogol's life to help the author make a point at times. But the ending is well done, and quite moving. Gogol himself is a wonderfully realized character, as are a couple others -- his mother, Ashima, for example, and also his eventual wife. Some of the other characters are a bit thin, not wholly convincing. The prose is excellent -- Lahiri is a very fine writer qua writer. And the general theme is well conveyed -- the conflicted desire, as I see it, of someone like Gogol to be fully American (as he surely is) but not to lose his heritage (a desire sometimes expressed more as rebellion tinged with guilt). And this is nicely contrasted with Ashima's situation -- she is really reluctant to move from India, and misses her home her whole life -- then by the end she is herself, we realize, as American as she is Indian.

Hugo Ballot Review: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, by John Wiswell

Hugo Ballot Review: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, by John Wiswell

by Rich Horton

Here is a review of the fifth of six nominees for the Best Novel Hugo that I have read. John Wiswell has been publishing short fiction for the past 15 years, a few dozen stories already, with considerable success: multiple nominations for both the Hugo and the Nebula, with one Nebula Award resulting, Best Short Story for "Open House on Haunted Hill", which I also reprinted in my Best of the Year volume. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is his first novel. In addition to its Hugo nomination, it is on the Nebula final ballot.

The story is told from the point of view of Shesheshen, who is a shapeshifting monster, or wyrm, and who has threatened the population of the Isthmus for some time. As the novel opens, Shesheshen is awakened early from her yearly hibernation by a familiar menace -- monster hunters. These are Catharsis Wulfyre and his two hired monster experts. Catharsis is the eldest son of the Baroness Wulfyre, who seems to be the closest thing to a ruler the Isthmus has -- situated as it is between two mutually hostile polities. Catharsis wishes to kill the monster before his mother returns to the nearby town of Underlook. But Shesheshen is able to kill him instead.

We learn a bit about Shesheshen-- her shapeshifting ability is supplemented by using organs and harder pieces mostly taken from prey -- such as Catharsis's jaw. (I was reminded of the symbiotic creatures in another Hugo finalist, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Alien Clay.) She is the one survivor of a clutch of eggs laid by her mother inside the body of the late Baron Wulfyre (the husband of the current Baroness.) (Shesheshen ate her siblings, which seems to by the way wyrms operate.) This gives some understandable motivation to the Wulfyres' obsession with killing wyrms. Shesheshen, shapeshifting into the form of a woman, reconnoiters in Underlook, only to be discovered and chased away. She falls off a cliff, but is rescued by a young human woman, Homily. And almost instantly (too instantly, in my view) they fall in love, though of course Homily doesn't know that Shesheshen, who takes the name Siobhan, is a wyrm.

The plot proceeds nicely enough -- Homily turns out to be one of Catharsis Wulfyre's sisters. Her mother, the Baroness, soon shows up, along with her other sisters, Epigram and Ode. (I did like the Wulfyre names.) Epigram, a few years young than Homily, is a nasty piece of work, and Ode, though still a young child, seems to be even worse. The entire family was abusive to Homily but Homily still is in their thrall to an extent, and now she joins in the monster hunt, with "Siobhan" helping out. I won't detail how this works out -- it's interesting enough, and there is one quite nice twist, and of course in the end the good guys win. (I don't think that counts as a spoiler.)

But -- and perhaps you could see a but coming -- the novel really did not work for me. There is some pretty promising material here -- some fun ideas. (Though the mechanics of the shapeshifting plus usage of found materials don't bear much thinking about.) But I kept coming up against things that made me just go "No! I don't believe that at all!" Not the fantastical ideas -- those were either fun enough or get a pass because, hey, it's fantasy. But things like Shesheshen -- who claims to hate talking -- having a spectacular and quite idiomatic understanding of the local language. The entire characterization of Homily didn't ring true. Homily's abuse is real, but her family is an overdetermined example of abusers used for convenient "good guy/bad guy" labelling -- and children are seen as responsible for abuse as adults. The worldbuilding is flimsy -- the geography and local politics unconvincing. The prose is mostly OK, but there are a few misses, and some jarringly contemporary language. The human characters are very scantily characterized. The novel's structure is off -- the worst aspect being an unbearably tedious closing part -- what should have been perhaps two pages of a sort of coda goes on and on (and the important stuff that is said to happen during this is not even shown, just mentioned.) Much is made of Homily being "stocky" but ... it doesn't really land, or seem to matter. And I was really annoyed that the central "hard issue" -- Shesheshen's need for a host for her eggs (as the title promises) is completely ducked. 

I think a lot of the issues I raise are essentially "first novel" issues, and totally understandable. Most aren't fatal -- just annoying. There's definite promise here -- and Wiswell has done some nice work at shorter lengths -- it's just that this is a Hugo and Nebula nominee, and I really don't see it. 

Review: Rowany de Vere and a Fair Degree of Frost, by Chaz Brenchley

Review: Rowany de Vere and a Fair Degree of Frost, by Chaz Brenchley

by Rich Horton

Chaz Brenchley is a delightful writer, an Englishman long resident in the US, born in the same year I was born. He's been publishing SF and Fantasy since the early '90s. I reprinted two of his stories in my Best of the Year books. Of late he's been publishing a series of "girls' school" stories, set at a boarding school in a crater on Mars -- the Crater School. The books are marketed as YA, and I haven't read them yet but I will get to them.

His new novella, Rowany de Vere and a Fair Degree of Frost, now available from the outstanding UK small press NewCon, seems to be set in the same world, as Rowany de Vere is a graduate of the Crater School. This version of Mars is a bit steampunkish -- it's a colony of the British Empire, complete with canals, airships, mysteriously maintained gravity and atmosphere (in all senses of the word), and also a setting for the Great Game -- the Victorian Era conflict between Russia and the UK. (This also seems to be the same Mars as in his story "The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red, Red Coal", one of those I reprinted.)

Rowany, a newish recruit to the Colonial Service, has been tasked with escorting a Russian defector, Leonov, to safety. This is her first solo mission, and so it's not surprising when her charge complains that he's been met by a mere girl, instead of someone like the legendary Colonial Service man Mr. Colpert. But Rowany is who he's got, and she tells him that for now he's her Uncle Vasily, and they are going to meet her father. And they're off.

It's soon clear that (as was certainly expected) some Russian agents are on their trail. So Rowany takes them off to the fair being held on the canal (it's "Second Christmas") which means skating. And dodging through crowds, and finding a boy named Tommie to give them a bit of help -- then a long parlous skate, and an escape into the bad side of Marsport, where some feral children are happy to harass the Russians who are still following them -- then onto the train, only to find themselves followed by an airship ... and ...

But why tell more? It's a romp, a delight, with plenty of derring-do and narrow escapes and Rowany surprising herself with her cleverness, and a pretty conclusion complete with expected twist. This is lots of fun -- and Brenchley is ever great fun to read.

Review: Up the Line, by Robert Silverberg

Review: Up the Line, by Robert Silverberg

by Rich Horton

SFWA Grandmaster Robert Silverberg had a career of a rather interesting shape. He broke into the field as a teenager in 1954, with his first two stories appearing that year, one in the UK magazine Nebula, and one in the US magazine Future. His first novel, a juvenile called Revolt on Alpha C, appeared in 1955, and over the next decade he published a couple of dozen SF novels and many dozen stories. (He also published widely in other genres: crime, Westerns, erotica, but SF was always his prime focus.) By the early '60s, however, the magazine market had greatly shrunk, and Silverberg mostly left the field, concentrating for a few years on popular science. SF novels kept appearing at a slower rate, but some of these were expansion of earlier stories, or YA. Famously he was lured back to SF by editor Frederik Pohl, who urged him to do more ambitious work, and beginning in 1963 some increasingly impressive short fiction started appearing, with a return to novels in 1967. Over the next five years (though a couple more novels appeared in 1975 and 1976) he published another couple of dozen novels, and the best of these are outstanding work. He publicly "retired" again by about 1975, only to be lured back to the field by a very high advance for his novel Lord Valentine's Castle, which came out in 1980, and over the next couple of decades another couple of dozen novels appeared, about eight in the Majipoor series but many unconnected. He produced some more short fiction through the first decade of the new millennium before, to all intents and purposes, finally retiring from fiction writing.

I've been making a somewhat desultory effort to read through all his early SF novels, and all his mid period novels. (I've read a good sampling of his later work, put I'm not sure I have the energy to attack all of Majipoor.) The middle period novels really do include some remarkable work -- I'd mention Thorns, Downward to the Earth, Dying Inside, A Time of Changes, and The Stochastic Man as particular favorites. There are still I few from this period I hadn't get gotten to, and one of these is Up the Line. This was serialized in two parts in Amazing Stories, July and September 1969, and more or less simultaneously appeared as a paperback original from Ballantine Books.

Up the Line is a time travel novel. Judson Elliot III is a young man in a the middle of the 21st century, bored with his pre-ordained role as a law clerk (his father is a judge), so he runs away to New Orleans, where he somewhat fortuitously runs into a somewhat older black man named Sam, who suggests he apply for a job with the Time Service once he runs out of money. It seems time travel has been around for a couple of decades, and people in the Time Service work essentially as tour guides, taking groups of ten or so people "up the line" to historical times (it's impossible to go to the future of wherever your own life has taken you.) 

Jud actually has a decent education in Byzantine history, and in addition some of his ancestors were from Greece and Turkey back in those times, so he decides to concentrate on that period. We get a good look at the rules the Time Service operates under -- avoidance of paradoxes, trying never to meet another of your "selves" when you go back in time, etc. We also realize pretty quickly that the Time Service treats these rules a bit loosely, though with care -- and there is a certain amount of smuggling of relics from the past, as well as some other theoretically forbidden activity. Still, there is the risk of the other branch of the Time bureaucracy, the Time Patrol, discovering your shenanigans, which can lead to suspension, to a trip back in time to fix whatever problems you caused, or even in extreme cases to erasure from history.

We see a number of trips in time -- first back just over a century to witness Huey Long's assassination, then a number of different trips to Byzantium/Constantinople. These trips go back all the way to Constantine's time, and forward through Justinian's era, Belisarius, the Iconoclasts, and finally the last couple of centuries as Islam and the Crusaders variously despoil the Byzantines. There is a fair bit of depiction of the real history behind all this, and there is also a lot of depiction of sex -- at first with members of the tour groups, but eventually, inevitably, with the "locals", including the Empress Theodosia. (For this novel, Silverberg accepts Procopius' slanders of Theodosia as the truth, though it's my understanding that historians now regard those stories as sheer political smears.) There is a scary episode with one of the tourists setting up a criminal enterprise of his own, made worse by his interest in barely pubescent girls, and, of course, Jud is eventually tempted to try a sort of distant incest with his many greats grandmother -- only to fall desperately in love.

In the end, I think this is pretty minor Silverberg. It's professionally done -- a slick and engaging read. The manipulation of time paradoxes is well handled, and the history seems pretty solid. Some aspects are a bit queasy making to contemporary eyes -- the characterization of Sam, Jud's black friend, while positive, does make some political points that maybe seem a bit off coming from a white writer. And the sex is -- well, let's just say the male gaze gets some play, and the sexual morés are perhaps unconvincing -- thought partly intended, I think, as a satire on a future hedonistic culture. On the whole its a decent read, but it's not one of the books on which Silverberg's reputation is based. 

Hugo Ballot Review: The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett

Hugo Ballot Review: The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett

by Rich Horton

This is the fourth of the 2025 Hugo finalists for Best Novel that I have read. Robert Jackson Bennett is a writer I have heard of before, but have never read. His first novel came out in 2009, and he has received a good deal of attention for his work -- two novels, Mr. Shivers and American Elsewhere, won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, and two of his series (Divine Cities and The Founders) have been finalists for the Hugo for Best Series. The Tainted Cup is the first book in a new series, Shadow of the Leviathan. (The second book in the series, A Drop of Corruption, has already appeared this year.) It is a fantasy detective novel, and I'll confess that I was happy to hear that -- it sounds like fun. (And I recently read another fantasy detective novel, Lisa Tuttle's The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief.)

The narrator is one Dinios Kol, who has recently been appointed Assistant Investigator to the Iudex Investigator for Daretana, a remote canton of the Kahnum Empire. This investigator is Anagosa Dolabra, a decidely eccentric woman of middle years. Din, meanwhile, is a youngish man, though a bit old to still be an apprentice -- his appointment as Ana's assistant is conditional, dependent upon successful completion of his apprenticeship. 

The current investigation is of a spectacular murder -- the first exciting assignment Din has had. (The first four months of his time with Ana involved tedious dealings with financial fraud cases.) Ana has a disability -- she is unable to tolerate excessive sensory stimulation, and she spends most of her time in her rooms, often blindfolded. So it is up to Din to handle the physical investigation -- but he does have one ability that will help -- he is an "engraver", and has perfect memory of everything he sees and hears, so can report precise details to Ana. This ability is due to an "apothetikal" modification -- a sort of fantastical plant based biotechnology. There are many such modifications, mostly used by the Iyalets, the four main branches of Empire service: Din's branch, the Iudex, are the criminal investigators; the Apothetikals are the masters of biotech; the Engineers maintain the Empire's infrastructure, and the Legion is the military. Apothetikal modifications include tremendous strength, enhanced vision, great powers of calculation, and many more. 

What Din finds in this investigation is that a certain Commander Blas of the Engineers had been visiting a house owned by the Hazas, a powerful "Gentry" family; and that suddenly a plant "bloomed" inside his body, killing him horribly. This plant is "dapplegrass", which grows so quickly that when it was first invented it destroyed an entire canton before it was contained. Ana and Din soon learn that in the neighboring canton of Talagray ten more engineers have been killed, also by dapplegrass, and some of them were working on the seawall that protects the Empire from being overrun by the incredibly huge leviathans in the oceans. It's very clear that these murders must be solved quickly, especially since the breach in the seawall caused by the dapplegrass blooming within it leaves Talagray vulnerable to a leviathan -- and the wet season, when the leviathans approach the shore, is upon them. 

Ana and Din head to Talagray, and start investigating, even as more murders are discovered. There is clearly some sort of conspiracy at hand, and there are plenty of suspects, including the Haza family, a cabal of Engineers, discontented exiles from the canton that had been overrun by the dappleglas, and even potentially members of the team assembled to help with the investigation. Din continues to perform the active work of crime scene examinations and interrogations, while Ana analyzes what is found, makes brilliant deductions, and strategizes next steps. It is a true race against time, and we get to know Din and Ana better and better, as Din makes some remarkable discoveries about his own abilities, and we get hints of a past for Ana. Of course they do solve the crime(s) -- and the solutions are pretty satisfactory (though there is some coincidence, and perhaps Ana's deductions are somewhat implausibly brilliant.) 

The real fun of the book is the mismatched pair at its center. Ana is a pure delight -- cranky and demanding but funny and honest; while we really come to like Din, a poor boy making good despite personal difficulties. Other characters -- especially the fiercely honest military veteran Tazi Miljin, and Din's love interest Kepheus Strovi (they don't get together until the end but I could see from when they first met where that was going) are interesting as well. The magical* inventions are neat too -- Din's special abilities, the various apothetikal modifications, the nature of the leviathans, the scary "twitch" -- really well done. 

Where does it rank on my Hugo ballot so far? Roughly third out of four -- pretty much on a level with T. Kingfisher's A Sorceress Comes to Call but behind Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Alien Clay; with the difference coming down mainly to science fictional interest and ambition. All four of the novels so far have been at least very enjoyable reads. 

*(I can easily imagine this book recast as science fiction -- what is presented as magic here could have been given a scientific justification, admittedly not a terribly convincing one.)

Review: In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden

Review: In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden

by Rich Horton

Rumer Godden was one of the great mid-century British women writers who tended to get ignored a bit because, well, women's fiction (and the tendency to denigrate it as purely middlebrow.) Other examples: Barbara Pym, Margery Sharp, Elizabeth Jane Howard. She was, to be sure, quite successful commercially -- nine books became movies, and her books sold quite well. Novels like Black Narcissus and The River (and their associated movies) remain well respected. Below is the potted bio I wrote the last time I covered Godden:

Margaret Rumer Godden was born in England in 1907, but was largely raised in India (her father was a shipping executive.) She spent some time at school in England, but mostly lived in India until after the Second World War. She ran a ballet school in Calcutta (now Kolkata) for twenty years. She converted to Catholicism in 1968 after many years of study. Ballet, India, and Catholicism are all recurring subjects of her books. She wrote some 60 books -- novels, children's books, memoirs. Her elder sister, Winsome Ruth Key Godden, was also a novelist (writing as "Jon Godden"), and the two collaborated on some memoirs late in life. She married twice, the first time unhappily, the second time much more successfully (though she has been quoted as saying she never really loved any man but Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice!) She had two daughters. She was named an Officer of the British Empire in 1993, and died, a month short of her 91st birthday, in 1998.

That potted bio just above notes her conversion to Catholicism in 1968. The novel at hand, In This House of Brede, was published in 1969. It is set at Brede, a Benedictine monastery for nuns (that is -- not a convent.) Godden herself spent three years living just outside a monastery -- partly to research for this book, but also, I assume, as part of her studying Catholicism. I should note that I myself was raised Catholic, and I often find myself admiring Catholic fiction, particularly perhaps fiction by converts -- Gene Wolfe and Graham Greene are two other examples.

The novel opens with Philippa Talbot, an highly respected member of the British Civil Service, suddenly resigning her position. Many of her fellows at the organization are shocked -- she was greatly admired and clearly going places. But she herself has been planning this for some time, and her boss, Sir Richard, as well as her close friend, McTurk, have been told for years that she intends to become a nun. She had had an affair with the married Sir Richard, and had broken it off (though they remained friends.) We learn that she had previously been married, but her husband died in the War, and her very young son had also died, in circumstances she won't discuss. 

The rest of the book covers about 15 years of her life at Brede -- a couple of years as a novice, followed by time as a junior sister, but -- perhaps inevitably though not without personal struggle -- eventually rising to a position of authority. There is a lot going one besides Philippa's story -- the death of one Abbess and the difficulties the new one has; a serious financial difficulty caused by the old Abbess; issues for several of the incoming novices, which in some cases mean they have to leave, and in other cases are resolved only after torturous personal discovery; the installation of a beautiful new altar; literary works by a few nuns; an effort to help establish a new Benedictine monastery in Japan; intricate examination of the personalities of the various nuns, and their conflicts with each other, the petty jealousies and so on -- plus a slight hint of Lesbianism, and also a side plot about abortion (for someone outside Brede.) We also, eventually, learn the details of Philippa's history.

It's a beautiful novel, really. The characters are exceptionally well captured, the writing is lovely. It's a long book, well over 600 pages in my edition, a 2005 Loyola Classics reprint, though it's probably only some 160,000 words -- long, but not as long as 600+ pages would general indicate. (The book was originally published by Viking -- Loyola Press is a Catholic publishing venture, as the name indicates.) At any rate, for all its length, and despite its constricted setting, it is never boring. It succeeds completely as a description of monastic life, and as a convincing argument for its value. We really do understand that these women are living fulfilled lives, and are variously happy or sad according to their natures and the vicissitudes of their lives. A few events seem somewhat convenient, particularly the resolution to Brede's financial crisis, but so be it. A book much worth reading. 

Hugo Ballot Review: Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hugo Ballot Review: Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

by Rich Horton

My next review of a Hugo nominated novel is Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky (real name Czajkowski -- publishers asked to change it because the composer's name is so familiar) has been publishing SF and Fantasy prolifically since 2008. He has been nominated for the Hugo six times -- twice each in the categories Novel, Novella, and Series. He won for Best Series in 2022 but declined the award after the hugely questionable nomination ballot counting issues were revealed. This year he has two novel nominees (the other is for Service Model) and another series nomination, for The Tyrant Philosophers. I have read some short fiction (including "Dress Rehearsal", which I included in by Best of the Year collection for 2017) and one novel: Children of Time, which I found quite impressive.

Alien Clay is also pretty impressive. Tchaikovsky is fascinated by unusual biology -- that certainly was central to Children of Time, and it's central here. The narrator, Arton Daghdev, is a scientist -- a biologist with great interest in ecology, but he has been exiled to a work camp on the exoplanet Kiln. It seems Earth is now dominated by an authoritative government called the Mandate, which among other things tightly regulates science -- only science that supports the Mandate's view of the universe is allowed. Daghdev was as outspoken as he could get away with, until he crossed a line and got sent to Kiln. He was also a real revolutionary, but hadn't been caught at that.

On Kiln he is assigned to Dig analysis, and is also contacted by the head of the camp, Commandant Teloran, who is reasonably well-educated, thought still a tool of the Mandate, and who wants Daghdev to participate in the effort to find the missing "Builders" -- the species that supposedly left a series of structures behind that seem the result of intelligence, especially since there are symbols written on the structures that seem an alphabet of sorts. Daghdev is well aware that any appearance of collaboration with the Commandant will result in ill treatment from his fellow prisoners, so he doesn't directly help him, but he is fascinated by the scientific question.

Soon he realizes that Kilnish life is very differently organized than Earth life, and almost every creature they find is a composite species, with several different individuals cooperating to survive. This sort of thing is very much not approved by Mandate science -- but it's also clearly the key to unlocking the secrets of the planet and the "builders". Daghdev gets in trouble eventually for two reasons -- one, he openly mocks the absurd attempts of the leading scientist on Kiln to manipulate the data they show Teloran in order to fit the Commandant's prejudices, and, two, he joins a resistance movement among the other workers at the camp, who aim to oust the Commandant and steal a spaceship to return to Earth. And thus Daghdev, with several of his allies, is demoted to "Excursions" -- a very dangerous group, as these are the people who make field visits to Kilnish sites, with purposely substandard equipment. Kiln is a very scary environment -- but ... this is also a way to actually study Kiln up close. 

I've left a lot out for spoiler avoidance. But it's a very enjoyable novel. It's a bit of a slow burn -- the first half or so is spent on rather overdone descriptions of how terrible the Mandate is, and how bad things are on Kiln, etc. etc. I think this could have been somewhat cut -- but also it's fair to say that Tchaikovsky has developed an appealing voice, or prose style -- rather sarcastic, full of quite clever images, and fun to read. His prose doesn't sing -- but it does maintain an effective "patter", if you will. So I was never bored -- and once Daghdev joins "Excursions" the book picks up dramatically -- his final expedition is tremendously exciting, and the promised revelations about Kiln and the "builders" and all are science-fictionally fascinating (though I did figure out the general shape of things pretty quickly -- which isn't really a bad thing, some books of this nature are puzzles in a way, and are satisfying to solve.)

Quite a good SF novel, and real SF too -- as of now (but I have three novels to go) it is second on my Hugo Ballot. 

Review: Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

Review: Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

by Rich Horton

Our book club discussed Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight this week, which prompted a long overdue reread on my part. I had first read it way back in my Golden Age, or technically shortly later -- when I was 14 or so instead Peter Graham's 12. I believe I read the 1968 Hugo winner "Weyr Search" first, in Isaac Asimov's second Hugo Winners anthology, or perhaps in Nebula Award Stories Three, and I read the sequel, "Dragonrider", in Nebula Award Stories Four. I am honestly not sure at this remove that I read Dragonflight back then -- it comprises "Weyr Search", "Dragonrider", and an additional novella length story that fits in between "Weyr Seach" and "Dragonrider". (This story seems to have originally been called "Crack Dust, Black Dust" but was never published separately.) Back then I think I may have assumed that there was no new material in Dragonflight. I did go on to read the first sequel, Dragonquest (1971), but never continued to any further Pern stories. By the time The White Dragon came out in 1978 I was in college, and I suspect I simply didn't have the time to read it. (I do remember that it was one of the earlier SF novels to get prominent front of store placement in the Waldenbooks where I still worked part time -- and indeed The White Dragon did become a New York Times bestseller.)

Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011) began publishing SF in 1953 with a story in Hugo Gernsback's odd late return to SF edition with Science Fiction Plus, but didn't sell any more stories until "The Lady in the Tower" (1959) and "The Ship Who Sang" (1961). She published a couple more "Ship" stories in 1966, but while those drew some attention it was "Weyr Search" that made her name. It appeared in Analog for October of 1967, and "Dragonrider" quickly followed, a two part serial, in December 1967 and January 1968. The novel Dragonflight came out in 1968. "Weyr Search" won the Hugo for Best Novella (in a tie with Philip Jose Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage"*) and "Dragonrider" won the Nebula for Best Novella. McCaffrey was the first woman to win a Hugo for fiction, and was tied with Kate Wilhelm as the first woman to win a Nebula, as Wilhelm's "The Planners" won for Best Short Story the same year that "Dragonrider" won. Dragonflight was McCaffrey's first novel, and two more novels followed in 1969 (The Ship Who Sang (fixed up from the stories) and Decision at Doona) so her career was well established, and she proceeded to publish dozens more novels in a variety of series -- not just Pern, but the Ship seres, Doona, Crystal Singer, and more. Much of her later work was in collaboration with various writers, including her son Todd. She was named an SFWA Grand Master in 2005.

I have to admit that in later years one reason I never returned to Pern was an impression I had that it had become, essentially, pure traditional fantasy; and also that much of it was YA. The latter is somewhat ture, but not entirely, but I am told (by other book club members) that the main sequence of Pern novels is quite definitely science fiction, and does some interesting things with technological developments, and also with SFnal rationales for the abilities of the dragons. Pern has often been cited as an SF/Fantasy edge case, perhaps unfairly -- largely because for many people dragons = fantasy. The Pern books can also be called a sort of Romantasy precursor -- especially to books like those in Rebecca Yarros' Empyrean series, which feature dragons and dragonriders. That said, while there is definitely romance in the Pern books I've read, it is less prominent than in Romantasy (as far as I can tell) and there is certainly less explicit sex.

As for Dragonflight -- as noted, I had read it decades ago, but I really recalled fairly little. For this reading I read both the two original novellas in their magazine publication and the book version. I will say that the differences between the books and the novellas are quite minor (except for the added section in the novel.) There are a few changes at the sentence level, either thanks to the book editor, or to McCaffrey doing revisions. It did seem to me that even by the magazine version of "Dragonrider" her prose was improving -- she was still a fairly new writer, even in her early 40s, so it's not surprising that she was getting better. 

There are two primary viewpoint characters in the novel. Lessa is a scullery maid at Ruatha Hold, but secretly she is the only survivor of the ruling family of the Hold, the rest of whom had been massacred by Lord Fax a decade earlier. Lessa, just now reaching adulthood, is plotting to have Fax killed so she can reclaim her hold. Meanwhile F'Lar, a bronze dragonrider from the only remaining Weyr, Benden, is Searching for a new Weyrwoman -- a woman with the telepathic ability to bond with a Queen dragon; as the old Queen is about to die, and her bonded Weyrwoman is incompetent. F'Lar's Search has not been promising, but at last he comes to Ruatha, despite being told that there is no one left of "royal" blood. Well, you can see where that's going, and indeed, F'Lar does manage to recognize in Lessa the abilities he needs, while she is able to manipulate F'Lar to confront Lord Fax ... Along with this, we learn that the Holds and some of the dragonriders do not believe that the "threads" which the dragons and their riders burn away are a threat any more.

The subsequent story concerns Lessa's first couple of years at Benden Weyr, learning the historic lore of the dragonriders, and her and F'lar's ascension to leadership, even as the two of them still don't get along well. Then it is time for the threads -- and we see the desperate attempt of the limited number of remaining dragons and riders to fend them off. F'Lar and Lessa -- particularly Lessa -- come up with a rather clever method of fighting the threads despite their depleted numbers. I'll leave that secret to the readers to discover. 

There is the skeleton of a really interesting novel here, but I don't think McCaffrey pulled it off. The prose is erratic -- as I said, it improves, but McCaffrey really wasn't a good writer at this time. The central romantic relationship just doesn't come off -- there is no chemistry between the leads, and it all seems forced (literally so, at times.) Some of the conflicts are too easily resolved, some don't convince, and the pacing is off (to some extent because of the structure compelled by the novel being written in three parts.) I do think a complete rewrite, keeping the same basic story but fixing the issues I mention, could be pretty effective. And I believe the later novels in the long series got better.

I know these are books many people love -- and Dragonflight was a book I quite liked when I was much younger. But I think this is a book that hasn't held up -- even if later books work much better. 

*("Weyr Search" tieing for the Hugo prevented Harlan Ellison from a clean sweep of the short fiction Hugos that year -- "Riders of the Purple Wage" was from his anthology Dangerous Visions, as was the novelette winner (Fritz Leiber's "Gonna Roll the Bones"), while Ellison himself kept two other Dangerous Visions stories from winning -- his "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" beat out Larry Niven's "The Jigsaw Man" and Samuel R. Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah".)

Review: Major Arcana, by John Pistelli

 Review: Major Arcana, by John Pistelli

I have been busy the last couple days and will be for the next couple so I haven't finished my next planned review (Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey), so I figured I'd post a link to my review at my Substack of John Pistelli's Major Arcana.

Review: The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren

Review: The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren

by Rich Horton

The Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002) is by far best known for Pippi Longstocking (1945) and its sequels. I encountered these at about the age of 10, but didn't continue to any other books by Lindgren, though she was very prolific. The novel at hand, The Brothers Lionheart, was first published in 1973 in Sweden, and in 1975 in English (translation by Joan Tate) -- so it's not surprising that I never knew of it as I would have been 15 or 16 when I could have possibly seen a copy -- and by then I was not reading much YA fiction. The first I heard of this book, actually, was just the other day when Farah Mendlesohn happened to mention it on Facebook. She praised it wholeheartedly, and many others echoed that praise. I figured I ought to give it a try.

The story is told by Karl Lion, a frail boy, about ten years old. He is unable to do much of anything due to his health, and he idolized his older brother, 13 year old Jonathan, who is very popular, beloved by his teachers and by the other children, and who is also very devoted to Karl, whom he calls Rusky. He tells Rusky stories, for example stories of Nangiyala, where the sagas come from and where you go when you die. And then a tragic event happens -- there is a fire, and the building where Karl, his mother, and Jonathan live burns down. Jonathan rushes back into the building to save his brother -- and jumps out of a second floor window at the last minute. Karl is saved, but Jonathan dies of his injuries, reminding Karl at the end that he'll be OK -- he'll be in Nangiyala. Soon after, Karl dies as well.

And, indeed, Karl finds himself in Nangiyala, in a house with his brother, in a place called Cherry Valley. They are very happy there -- it is an idyllic place, where no one goes wanting, and there is cooperation and community. Both brothers, of course, are fully cured of illness and injury. Karl gets to do the things he has always wanted -- to camp, and fish, and ride horses. But there is a shadown -- Cherry Valley is happy, but a neighboring place, Wild Rose Valley, has been conquered by Tengil, the evil leader of a harsh nearby country, Karmanyaka. Tengil fiercely oppresses the people in Wild Rose Valley, using the mysterious threat of Katla -- the nature of which we don't know until near the end of the book -- to keep them in line. 

There is a resistance movement, and there is a desire in Cherry Valley to come to the aid of their neighboring valley. And Jonathan -- now called Lionheart -- is a leader, along with an older woman named Sofia. Another rebel leader, Ortvar, is imprisoned by Tengil, and Jonathan realizes he must find a way into Wild Rose Valley, and help the people there rise up against Tengil. So he leaves -- and soon after, Karl has a dream which convinces him that he must come to his brother's aid. And despite what he considers his lack of courage, he finds a way to Wild Rose Valley, fortuitously encountering some of Tengil's men on the way -- along with a traitor from Cherry Valley. Karl convinces the guards that he is from Wild Rose Valley, living with his grandfather -- and when they ask him where his house is, he luckily sees a likely old man living alone and claims him as his grandfather -- and wouldn't you know it, this is the same man who is helping Jonathan hide from Tengil!

Things continue as we might expect -- Jonathan has dug a tunnel out of Wild Rose Valley, and he and Karl use to escape and head for Karmanyaka, and for the cave of Katla, where Ortvar must be imprisoned. The two boys bravely make there way to the cave, rescue Ortvar, face down the terrifying Katla, and return to Cherry Valley, to rally the people for the final battle against Tengil.

In many ways this is a pretty typical children's portal fantasy. The broad outline of the plot resembles many other examples -- from minor works such as X. J. Kennedy's The Owlstone Crown to major works like C. S. Lewis's Narnia series. And, indeed, encountering this book as an adult I found some aspects disappointing -- the way things work out is in many ways too easy, too convenient. While there is definitely stress and tragedy in the battle to overcome Tengil, it still feels -- implausible, I guess. But on thinking it through, the strength of the novel lies elsewhere. It is an afterlife fantasy, through and through, and there's a reading available where it is all in Karl's mind, or perhaps a subcreation of both Karl and his Jonathan. And there are no compromises -- death is death, there is no return. Jonathan is a pacifist -- and this has consequences. And Nangilaya is not the only place in the afterlife -- there is also Nangilima ... The best scenes of this novel are truly moving. And the depictions of courage, of the moral response to villainy, of brotherly love -- these strike home. I have to say I think I'd have loved it uncritically had I found it when I was 10 or 12 (which of course I could not have.) Coming to it now -- it didn't strike me as strongly, but I'm still glad to have read it. 

Review: A Ladder of Swords, by Gilbert Parker

Review: A Ladder of Swords, by Gilbert Parker

by Rich Horton

I haven't read as many "Old Bestsellers" (the original focus of this blog) in recent times as I used to. (For my purpose, "Old Bestseller" primarily refers to popular fiction of the first half of the 20th Century.) But one writer I knew I'd get around to trying at some time was Gilbert Parker. And when I did my recent Victorian Fiction quiz, I realized that I really didn't have any Canadian writers featured -- and that that was primarily because I have read very little Victorian-era fiction by Canadians, and those I have read, such as Ralph Connor, are really too obscure for a general interest quiz. But Gilbert Parker? Well, he still might be rather obscure, but I knew of him as a very popular Canadian writer of mostly historical fiction, who was active around the turn of the 20th Century. So when I happened across a book by him at an estate sale the other day, I snapped it up.

Gilbert Parker was born in Camden East, a village in Southeastern Ontario, more or less the length of Lake Ontario away from Toronto, in 1862. He became a teacher, including for a time a teacher of the deaf, and then a lecturer at Trinity College in Toronto, before moving to Australia in 1885 to work as an editor for the Sydney Morning Herald. While in Australia he wrote a few short stories about Canada, but when he moved to London (England, not Ontario!) in 1889 and tried to publish a collection, it was politely rejected and Parker burned the stories -- saying later that he was certain the publisher who had rejected them was right. Soon after he began writing again, and another set of stories set in Canada appeared in 1892, Pierre and His People -- stories set in "the Far North" about fur trappers and the like. He continued to write stories in that mode, but soon turned to novels, most notably The Seats of the Mighty (1896), concerning the British conquest of Quebec in the middle of the 18th Century. Later novels tended to be set elsewhere than Canada -- including England, the Channel Islands, and even Egypt. His novels The Battle of the Strong (1898), The Right of Way (1901), and The Weavers (1907) were listed as among the top ten bestselling novels of their years in the United States. (One of his latest novels is The Power and the Glory (1925), which somehow is not remembered as well as a certain other novel of that title.) He married a wealthy American woman, Amy VanTine, in 1895. He was a Member of Parliament from 1900 to 1918, and was Knighted in 1902 and made a Baronet in 1915. He is considered instrumental in convincing the US to join on the British side in World War I. He died in 1932.

A Ladder of Swords was published in 1904. My copy is a 1914 reprint from A. L. Burt, then the most prominent publisher of inexpensive reprint editions. (This was, of course, long before the time of paperbacks.) The A. L. Burt edition reproduces the illustrations from the original, by the husband and wife team Troy Sylvanus Kinney and Margaret West Kinney, who signed their work "The Kinneys", and also reproduces the rather attractive cover shown above, with the gold leaf (or imitation gold leaf?) panel. I've also included a photo of the title page (with the credit to "Sir Gilbert Parker") and the frontispiece illustration of Queen Elizabeth with Angèle Aubert.

The novel is ostensibly set sometime in the 1570s, though a note at the beginning warns "there will be found a few anachnronisms in this tale, but none so important as to give a wrong impression of the events of Queen Elizabeth's reign." At the open Angèle Aubert and her father, a Councillor of the Parliament of Rouen, are living in exile on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. Angèle is a Huguenot (a French Reformed (i.e. Calvinist) Protestant) and so her family has been persecuted, as this is the time of the French Religious Wars. (At a guess, this is shortly after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in 1572 when a Catholic mob, probably incited by Catherine de Medici, the former Queen and mother of the then King, Charles IX, killed a group of Huguenots in Paris.) Angèle has just sent a letter to her betrothed, Michel de la Forêt, who is in hiding in France, as Catherine wishes to kill any remaining influential Huguenots. Michel then tries to reach Jersey, a dangerous trip which he takes in the company of a notorious pirate, Buonespoir, who is under sentence of death in both France and England. Their boat founders, but they are rescued by a nobleman on Jersey, Raoul Lemprière of Rozel. (Raoul had previously asked Angèle to marry him, but his honesty is proven by rescuing his rival.)

It quickly becomes clear that Michel's position is still precarious, as Catherine de Medici wishes Queen Elizabeth to arrest him and send him back to France, in exchange for some political support. Lemprière manages to facilitate the escape of Michel and Buonespoir from immediate arrest, but they must go to Elizabeth's court to negotiate his freedom. Angèle and her father travel to court as well, along with Lemprière and Rozel. There follows a few months of intrigue, also involving Elizabeth's favorite Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, as well as a friendly lady of the court called only the Duke's Daughter. We see a duel, a joust, Queen Elizabeth playing the virginal, and a number of scenes showing Angèle impressing the Queen with her virtue and loyalty. The general shape of the outcome is obvious from the start (though there is a rather depressing final episode, probably about 20 years later, but surely before the Edict of Nantes, in which the Huguenots were finally given freedom of religion* by Henry IV (who was also raised Protestant but had converted to Catholicism in order to keep the throne -- as he reputedly said: "The Crown is worth a Mass."**)) 

The novel is somewhat episodic in structure, and the main characters are a bit too much the paragons to hold the interest. Parker is arguably more interested in the relationship between Elizabeth and Dudley -- the book is very much anti-Leicester, and even implies that he is disgraced by the end of it, and more or less banished by Elizabeth. (In reality, he remained one of her favorites until he died in 1588, though of course his influence, as with everyone at court, had up and down periods.) The two more comic characters -- Lemprière and Buonespoir -- are enjoyable in their scenes. The historical aspects are somewhat reasonably portrayed, with some timeline issues -- with Leicester's career, as I noted, plus there is a mention of the future James I's birth, which actually happened in 1567, at least five years prior to the action of this book. And it's a bit tricky to place Catherine de Medici's involvement in things like her demand to Elizabeth to arrest Michel relative to real history. But that's all quibble.

In the end, this is a pretty minor novel, and probably not the best choice to have read among Parker's ouevre. Perhaps some day I'll get to The Weavers or The Seats of the Mighty, which seem to have better reputations.

(*Alas, the Edict of Nantes was revoked by the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, and eventually nearly all the Huguenots were driven out of France.)

(**I have read an historical novel about Henry IV's conversion to Catholicism in 1893, which essentially put a cap on the French Religious Wars -- this is Bertha Runkle's 1901 bestseller The Helmet of Navarre, which I review here.)

Review: The Sleep of Reason, by Michael Swanwick

Review: The Sleep of Reason, by Michael Swanwick

by Rich Horton

Around the turn of the millennium, Michael Swanwick wrote a sequence of short-shorts based on Goya's satrical etchings Los Caprichos. He had done short-short sequences before, most notably Puck Aleshire's Abecedary, in The New York Review of Science Fiction in the late '90s, and The Periodic Table of the Elements, a story for each then-known element, that appeared in Ellen Datlow's seminal online 'zine Sci Fiction beginning around 2001. Those two series became chapbooks in 2000 and 2005 respectively. The stories based on Los Caprichos, collectively called The Sleep of Reason, appeared in Eileen Gunn's excellent online magazine Infinite Matrix in 2002-2003, but did not get book publication until PS Publishing produced this volume in 2024. I got my copy at World Fantasy in Niagara Falls last year, and Michael was kind enough to sign it.

(He has done numerous other pieces of flash fiction, I should note, many making up smaller sequences, often published as beautiful tiny books from his wife Marianne Porter's Dragonstairs Press. I've been fortunate enought to obtain a couple of these, but the print runs are very small. Michael's bibliographer will have an Herculean task assembling all the information on those books!)

The title of this collection comes from the 43rd etching in Los Caprichos, "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos" (normally translated "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" though Swanwick replaces "monsters" with "nighmares").) These etchings were made in 1797-1798, and published in 1799. This volume reproduces each of the 80 prints on one page, with Swanwick's accompanying story on the opposite page. (The original edition of Los Caprichos included some prose commentary, probably by Goya, but Swanwick states in the last entry in this book that he found the commentary unsatisfactory, even complacent, in contrast to the implications of the prints themselves. (It seems that Goya included these comments partly to help explain his intent, but also to avoid reprisal from the objects of the satire by (unconvincingly, it seems) disguising the true targets, which presumably would have included the Inquisition. In the end the first edition was mostly withdrawn by the publisher, and Goya ended up selling the unsold copies and the original plates to the King. Several further editions have been produced from those plates, most recently in 1970.)

Each individual story is a sardonic narrative based on a particular etching. The stories are not presented in the numerical order Goya gave in his edition. The prints depict some recurring characters, named by Swanwick Prick the Donkey, Elena, and Grace; as well as recurring themes: nightmares, witches, monsters human and otherwise. Swanwick's reordering allows him to develop some thematic threads, as well as a continuing narrative for each of Prick, Elena, and Grace. The pieces about Prick develop his career, involving corruption in business, war, and politics, including time spent as the US President. Elena is a clever woman who delights in using her sexual wiles (and her job as a whore) to make fools of men, while Grace is an innocent beauty who is forced by circumtances into prostitution, and is treated dreadfully throughout. The witches and nightmares and the various other monstorosities pretty sharply illustrate the dark side of humanity (and society.)

The result is bracing -- a very funny book in a very uneasy way; a fierce satire on the depredations of the powerful; a despairing look at the the way men treat women; a condemnation of politicians, the church, the rich, and people in general. All of this was present in Goya's original, aimed then primarily at Spain. It is present in Swanwick's 2002 text -- aimed both at people throughout time, and the specifics of our world, especially our country, at that time. And the message resonates as much or more today, even if the specific details were originally aimed at others.

It's a dark book, for sure, and sardonic. At times the tone is cynical, at times almost imploring, at times just angry. It's not necessarily a book to read in one go -- perhaps pacing it like the original pacing of the stories' publications would makes sense. I read it in tranches of 5 or 10 stories at a time over a few weeks. Recommended.

Review: The Early Worm, by Robert Benchley

Review: The Early Worm, by Robert Benchley

by Rich Horton

Robert Benchley (1889-1945) was one of the leading American humor writers of his time, as well as a theater critic and a fairly successful character actor. He worked for a variety of publications, most notably the New Yorker in its early years, but also Life, Vanity Fair, and numerous other places. He was one of the most prominent member of the "Algonquin Round Table", a group of wits who met regularly at the Algonquin hotel. (Other famous members included Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woolcott, and Harold Ross.)

I've known of his work and reputation for a long time, but hadn't really read him, so I figured I'd try when I found his 1927 collection The Early Worm at an estate sale. My edition seems to be a first, from Henry Holt, but it's in rather poor condition. It is illustrated by Gluyas Williams, with some additional engravings by John Held.

I have to say that my basic reaction to most of the book is "I guess you had to have been there". And by "there" I mean, mostly, in New York in the early 1920s. It's easy to see that what he writes is supposed to be funny, and probably was when it was first seen, but doesn't quite come off now. Some of this is simply that the references are very topical, and sometimes pretty geographically bound as well. Some of this is that times have changed -- one essay laments that surely New York will soon by treated as Sodom and Gomorrah were, due to the profusion of theatrical revues featuring scantily clad women. This may have hit home then, but falls flat now. (I should note that Benchley was not being at all serious in this case.)

At times he belabors a joke too long -- the worst example is a series of short pieces for Life which tell of the "Life Polar Expedition" -- in which a group of writers for the magazine decide to race the Byrd and Amundsen expeditions to the North Pole -- on bicycle. That's one joke -- and it's a joke that was made effectively enough in the first 1000 words or so. So why was it extended to six entries?

But there are some bits here that are still amusing. He did a series of essays on "Fascinating Crimes", which tell of elaborately silly fictional crimes, in a sort of shaggy dog fashion, and I thought those were pretty nice. And some of his complaints about society do hold up -- "What College Did to Me" is a fine satirical look at his college career, and with minor updating it still applies today. Two satirical looks at Christmas traditions, "A Good Old-Fashioned Christmas" and "The Rise and Fall of the Christmas Card", are pretty effective. There are several supposed "interviews" with prominent people of that era -- Mussolini, Vice President Dawes, the Countess Karolyi -- which are so absurd as to keep the interest. And a parodic suggestion as to how Theodore Dreiser should write his next novel seemed spot on!

I should say that throughout there are occasional jokes, and an off-handedly witty point of view, that tickled this reader. I do suspect that he was writing for a specific audience here, and for that reason dulled the edge of his wit -- I would bet he might have been better being more savage. Still -- I don't doubt that he deserved his reputation -- but I'm not sure he really repays reading now. 

Hugo Novel Ballot Review: A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher

Hugo Novel Ballot Review: A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher

by Rich Horton

I'll be working my way through the 2025 Hugo Ballot for Best Novel in the next couple of months. I have already read Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time, which I highly recommend. I chose T. Kingfisher's novel next, in large part because I hadn't read any novels by her, nor by her alter ego Ursula Vernon, before; though I've read some short fiction which I enjoyed. 

Ursula Vernon is a very successful writer and illustrator -- of graphic novels and children's books. Most of her work for adults (not counting the graphic novels) is under the pseudonym T. Kingfisher. She has won a Best Novel Hugo for Nettle and Bone, a Best Graphic Novel for Digger (at the first Worldcon I ever attended, in Chicago in 2012), three short fiction Hugos, plus a Nebula and a Lodestar (for Best Young Adult Novel) and has received numerous other awards and nominations. Suffice it to say that she's been very successful -- and based on what I've read (mostly the award winning short fiction) she deserves her success.

A Sorceress Comes to Call is told through two viewpoint characters, and I listed to the audiobook, narrated very well by Eliza Foss and Jennifer Pickens. One of them tells the chapters from the point of view of Cordelia, a 14 year old girl; and the other the parts from the POV of Hester, a 50ish woman. 

We begin with Cordelia at church, and something strange is going on -- she has no control of her body. We soon gather that her mother, a sorceress, makes her "obedient" from time to time -- takes over her body either as punishment, or to make sure Cordelia does just what she wants. It's quite clear that the mother, Evangeline, is a monster, and indeed she is one of the most unremittingly evil characters I've encountered in recent fiction. Before long Evangeline's latest "benefactor" has broken off with her, and she hatches a plan to move to a larger city and seduce a wealthy man, with the goal of marriage and thus a more long-term secure financial position. But Evangeline knows that her age likely means she won't be able to gain the attention of as wealthy a man as she hopes, so she also decides that Cordelia, once established as the stepdaughter of a socially acceptable man, must attract an even wealthier husband, hopefully one old enough to die and leave his fortune in Cordelia's hands -- which functionally would mean Evangeline's. Cordelia hates her mother and hates that plan, and attempts to run away -- only to learn that her beloved horse Falada has betrayed her -- he is not a real horse, but Evangeline's familiar, and anything Cordelia tries will come immediately to her mother's attention. 

Hester, meanwhile, is the sister of Samuel, a Squire. She is fairly comfortable living with her brother, whom she loves affectionately, though he is a shallow if likeable man. She has had a lover, Lord Richard Evermore, but she rejected his marriage proposal for a couple of reasons: insecurity (she and Richard were about 40 when he proposed and she worries that her looks will fade and he'll lose interest) and a desire for independence. But suddenly she has a premonition of "Doom". And before long "Doom" shows up, in the person -- as the reader will have guessed -- of Evangeline, who has already attracted the Squire's attention. Samuel has never shown much interest in the "Parson's Trap" as he calls it -- but Hester senses that Evangeline might be problem in that area, though she doesn't know why. She does know, quickly enough, that Evangeline is a terrible person.

Cordelia and her mother are soon long-term guests at the Squire's house. And, slowly, Cordelia and Hester form a relationship -- Hester is suspicious of Cordelia at first but soon understands that she has been at least mentally abused by her mother, and that she needs helps as much or more as the Squire needs to be saved from a disastrous marriage. We also learn -- indeed, Cordelia realizes for the first time -- that her mother is more than just a terrible mother -- she's a murderer, and she has "punished" her former benefactor in an utterly horrifying fashion.

Hester hatches a plan to interfere with Evangeline's schemes -- she'll invite some friends to a "house party" in the hopes that the Squire can be distracted from Evangeline. But Evangeline is a tricky character -- and a murderer, and things accelerate horribly. Cordelia finally tries to convince Hester of Evangeline's real nature, and eventually she and Hester and Lord Evermore and a couple more of Hester's friends are desperately trying to learn how to stop sorcery. The problem is -- nobody in this world believes that sorcerers are capable of anything beyond, basically, hedge magic. So there's a step to get people to believe in the danger Evangeline poses -- and a lot of work to track down a way to deal with her. The resolution is pretty well done, with some very dark scenes, and courage, and some pretty clever magical logic.

So -- it's a good book, and I quite enjoyed it. The abuse of Cordelia is horrifying and well-depicted. Hester is a really nicely done character, and her romance is nice to see resolved. There is a fine gaggle (word chosen advisedly -- read the book!) of smart and witty women side characters, and a good butler and a nice lady's maid. There is a fun ghost, and the villainess is appropriately vile, and her actions are truly scary. I was involved throughout, and I cared about the plight of the good guys.

So, it's too bad this is a Hugo review. But I need to ask -- is it a great book? A worthy Hugo winner? I have to say, I don't think so. Part of it is simply a sense that it's a bit slight. It's enjoyable but not entirely convincing to me. Some of this worldbuilding -- the setting is sort of faux-Victorian, or perhaps faux-Regency, in a polity that seems somewhat similar to England in that time frame, but with references to the "Old Country" that make one things of Colonial America -- and none of that holds up which is OK I suppose because it's a fantasy world of sorts. But -- I found myself not believing things. And even in that context, the magical part is, well, kind of routine, if handled nicely enough. The solution is, as I suggested, kind of neat in context -- but also on the convenient side. None of my issues are at all fatal, I hasten to add -- it's a good read that I'm happy to have encountered -- and I'll be reading more by T. Kingfisher. It's just -- not quite Hugo level in my mind. 

[A side note -- not a comment on quality at all -- the novel is advertised as being an adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale "The Goose Girl". And you can seem some parallels -- but they are pretty slim, really. Which is just fine! It's its own story -- doubtless suggested or inspired by "The Goose Girl", but not really a retelling.]

Review: The Old English Baron, by Clara Reeve

Review: The Old English Baron, by Clara Reeve

by Rich Horton

Clara Reeve (1729-1807) was one of the significant woman writers of the 18th Century, though she got a late start. She published a book of poems at the age of 40, then in 1772 The Phoenix, a translation, from the Latin, of John Barclay's 1621 romance Argenis. She kept writing to the end of her life -- several novels and some nonfiction, including Plans for Education, concerning education for women, and a major early study of prose fiction, The Progress of Romance (1785). 

The Old English Baron is one of the most influential (if not necessarily one of the best) early works of Gothic fiction. It was first published in 1777 as The Champion of Virtue, then revised in 1780 as The Old English Baron. The author (originally anonymous, but with the revised version she began using her name on her books) wrote it as an explicit response to Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), and the plot has strong points of similarity to that book. But Reeve's purpose, in part, was to model a more realistic mode of the Gothic -- both to reduce the supernatural elements to make them more believable, and to emphasize the moral message.

It's a short novel -- maybe 55,000 words -- and fairly simple in plot. Sir Philip Harclay returns from the wars (in Turkey, it seems), and after reestablishing his own household, goes off to visit is close friend Lord Lovel, with whom he had lost contact during his time overseas. As he comes close to the man's manor, he learns from a peasant that the old Lord is dead, and that the new Lord Walter Lovel has sold his castle to another man, the Baron Fitz-Owen. Upon finally reaching the castle, he meets the Baron and his sons and their friend, including a young peasant named Edmund who has been brought up in the Fitz-Owen family almost as a sone -- and who is close to the younger son, William, but is disliked by the elder son, Richard. Sir Philip immediately notices a resemblance between Edmund and his late friend Arthur Lovel. The reader, of course, quickly guesses what's going on!

Four years later, Edmund having grown to the age of 18, the jealousy of Richard and especially of his friends has only grown, and they begin scheming to discredit him. Much of this is because Edmund and Lord Fitz-Owen's daughter, Emma, have fallen in love, and one of Richard's friends also wants her favors. It is time, too, for the young men to learn the arts of war, and they head off to France, where Ednmund distinguishes himself despite the schemes of Richard's friends. Upon their return to Lord Fitz-Owen's castle, things come to a head, as the scheming begins to have an effect on Lord Fitz-Owen. At the same time he is renovating an abandoned wing of the castle, which is rumored to be haunted. And so as a sort of trial, Endmund agrees to spend three nights in the haunted wing. Unsurprisingly, he is indeed haunted -- by the ghosts of Lord Arthur Lovel and his wife, and it becomes clear that they met their deaths by misadventure, and that Edmund is their son. In the end, Edmund leaves the Fitz-Owens and goes to Sir Philip Harclay, along with some proofs of his claims gained from visiting the peasant couple who had raised him until Lord Fitz-Owen took him into his household.

Not long after -- and only about two thirds of the way through the book -- Sir Philip agrees to help Edmund regain his rightful position. A letter is sent to Lord Walter Lovel, whom we now know arranged to have his kinsman murdered because he desired to have his wife for his own -- but she refused him and ran away, but died in childbirth due to the stress of fleeing. Walter Lovel refuses to admit his guilt, and what follows is a trial by combat. And then 50 pages or so of rather extended denouement, arranging for the fair disposal of everyone -- for Edmund to marry Emma and reclaim his father's title and castle, for Lord Fitz-Owen to be compensated for the castle he had innocently purchased, and even for Walter Lovel to have a chance at redemption after exile; and then a winding up of the future lives of Sir Philip, of the Fitz-Owens, and of course of Edmund and Emma.

I have to say I found the structure a bit confounding -- and I'm not the only reader! The book properly should have been wrapped up much more quickly after the trial by combat. The novel on the whole is just OK -- it's short enough that it's worth reading. The writing is not bad, very much of the 18th century in style, but well enough executed. It was Reeve's first novel -- she wrote a few more, a couple of contemporary novels and an historical novel, as well as poetry and nonfiction including an ambitious history of "Romance". It's true that The Old English Baron is more realistic in presenting its supernatural elements than The Castle of Otranto (which I haven't read but know the basics via synopsis.) But I felt in the end that a happy medium might have been achieved between the rather rudimentary haunts shown in this novel and the admittedly too over the top events from Otranto. (I am told that other Gothic novels such as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, or M. G. Lewis's The Monk, may be better examples of peak Gothic.)