Birthday Review: The Last Hawk, by Catherine Asaro

Today is Catherine Asaro's birthday, and so I have resurrected this review I did when it first came out of The Last Hawk.

Review Date: 06 May 1998

The Last Hawk, by Catherine Asaro
Tor, 1997, $25.95
ISBN: 0-312-86044-7

Catherine Asaro's latest Skolian novel is The Last Hawk. This takes place roughly at the same time as the action of her first novel, Primary Inversion, but on a completely isolated planet. The Skolian connection is that the protagonist, Kelric, is a member of the Ruby Dynasty, ruling family of the Skolian empire. He crash-lands on an isolated, restricted, planet, Coba, and becomes a pawn in an extended power struggle.

The novel is really concerned with the social and political setup on this planet. The society of this planet is female dominated, and a powerful male like Kelric is a threat, both to the societal structure, and to the political independence: this last because if he is found by the Skolians, the restricted label is likely to vanish, and Coba will be absorbed into the Empire.

There are other key aspects to the social structure: Coba is dominated by a number of Houses, each with a female head. The planet has replaced war with a game called Quis. Each House has some first rate Quis players: the Head of the house, and members of her household, especially including her "husbands" (or "akasi"s). Information is transmitted by Quis playing, and very good players can influence "public opinion" by innovative playing. I found this concept fascinating, though in the end quite unconvincing. An important aspect of this is that a Calani (male Quis player) from one household is very valuable to another household, because of his "inside knowledge", as it were, and a certain flexibility he seems to gain from being exposed to different styles of Quis. Thus these Calani become, essentially, prize commodities, tradable for money or political favors.

[Some of the following may include spoilers, though I don't think they are too bad. The spoilerphobic, however, may disagree. I'll mention briefly, then, that I liked the book, and I recommend it.]

After his crash, Kelric is rescued by a team from the leading allied house to the "ruling" house. Kelric, damaged and also unable to tolerate some of the local chemistry, barely survives. Soon, however, he has "married" the head of Dahl house (the house which found him), and he has met the heir apparent to the ruling House. Despite his emotional ties, he eventually tries to escape, and accidentally kills someone, as a result ending up in prison. However, he has two important things on his side: he is a natural genius at Quis (helped somewhat by his Skolian biomechanical enhancements); and he is very sexy, and the powerful women of the Houses tend to fall in love with him. The story follows him through a variety of Houses, as for political and other reasons he becomes a very rare Calani of six houses. However, the disruptions his presence causes begin to threaten the structure of Coban society.

This is an interesting novel, with much to recommend it, and very readable. I had problems with couple of things: the ultimate improbability of Quis is one, including the improbably sudden scientific advances supposedly resulting from Kelric transmitting ideas from Skolian culture to the Cobans via Quis. Also, a couple of villains who were almost too bad (though Asaro really tries hard to make them plausible and close to sympathetic), and I had a certain difficulty in staying emotionally involved with Kelric's many romances and quasi-romances. Kelric's amazing Quis ability was a bit of a cliché (though to be fair, Asaro provides at least some justification for it, in the form of his bio-mechanical enhancements), and the actions of some of the characters at times seemed to be designed to advance the plot rather than to arise from their own characteristics. The female-dominated society was quite well handled, I thought. Sometimes Asaro was too clearly engaging in allegory though, having the Coban women, generally good people, casually treat their men in blatantly sexist ways: all this seemed obviously a reversal of male sexism in our society: a fairly effective device for the most part, but a bit too pat and obvious in places. The novel's structure, in six parts corresponding to the six Houses of which Kelric becomes a member, allows Asaro to explore Coban society from many angles: some of the Houses are traditional, some modern, some strong, some weak: so we get a fairly varied look at the planet and society. That said, I didn't get a strong sense of a "complete" planet: rather, the society seemed to consist of smallish, isolated, enclaves.

Asaro has become known as a sort of hybrid SF/Romance writer. Her books are published by an SF imprint, and certainly widely read by SF readers, but she also gets reviewed in Romance-oriented publications, and as I recall she has won an award from a Romance organization. Her first two novels seemed on occasion to suffer from this dichotomy, as SF expectations were not necessarily satisfied, and possibly vice-versa. (I'm thinking in particular of Primary Inversion, which ends when the romance plot has been more or less resolved, but well before the SF/Adventure plot has been resolved. (I understand a direct sequel is forthcoming.)) The Last Hawk works very well as an SF novel, but might disappoint romance readers. Read as a romance, certain expectations are set up, and then (perhaps deliberately?) subverted. In fact, Asaro seems almost to be playing with Romance novel conventions: she has several romantic entanglements to work with, and they seem almost to be comments on typical relationship-types.

When I originally finished this book, I thought "Fast, fun, read. Some nice ideas. Not quite successful." Over the weeks since I've read it, it has improved in memory. Even if I found the basic idea of Quis unbelievable, it is a clever idea, and moreover one which works very well thematically. Also, I believe some of my original mild disappointment was related to a what I mention above: the failure of the novel to conform to typical Romance plot expectations. But on reflection, this is a strength, and not a weakness. I feel sure, too, that this novel plants a charge waiting to be detonated later in the Skolian series, whenever Coba confronts the Universe at large.

Birthday Review: The Prophecy Machine, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

I've already posted a review for Neal Barrett's birthday, but I had another one in my archives. This review appeared in Black Gate, I think, one of the early print issues. I figure I'd resurrect it as well.

The Prophecy Machine
by Neal Barrett Jr.
Bantam Spectra, New York, 2000, 342 pages, $6.50
ISBN: 0-553-58195-3

A review by Rich Horton

Sometimes an idea seems to suddenly become fashionable, and it pops up in several places almost simultaneously. In an earlier issue of Black Gate I reviewed Will Shetterly's Chimera, which is largely about animal/human genetic hybrids. Richard Calder's 1998 novel, Frenzetta is also about animal/human hybrids. In Chimera the main hybrid character is a jaguar person, while in Frenzetta it's a rat person. Here now is The Prophecy Machine by Neal Barrett Jr., again featuring animal/human hybrids, in this case with a "Mycer" (uplifted mouse) as the main female character. (One might speculate on what it means that in each of these novels the viewpoint character is (more or less, in the case of Frenzetta) a fully human male, while the animal/human hybrid is a female who is or becomes the viewpoint character's lover. Perhaps it means no more than "all of the authors mentioned are male".) (In this context I might also mention the distant sequel to Frenzetta, Malignos, which features a human male/goblin female relationship, a relationship which for some reason reminded me strongly of the relationship at the center of The Prophecy Machine.)

The Prophecy Machine opens with a Master Lizard Maker named Finn on a ship, taking a vacation with his wife, the "Mycer" Letitia Louise, and with an intelligent mechanical lizard named Julia Jessica Slag, an illegal creation of Finn's . Things have already gone bad, as the ship is crewed by "Yowlies" (uplifted cats), and Letitia Louise can't stand them, for obvious reasons. Things take several turns for the worse when Finn arouses the enmity of a fellow passenger who is abusing a Foxer servant, and then when Finn, Letitia Louise, and Julia are marooned in the strange country of Makasar, unfortunately also the home of Sabatino Nucci, the strange man whose enmity Finn had aroused on the ship.

Makasar is a strange place indeed. The inhabitants have a strict taboo against hospitality of any sort, which makes it hard for our heroes to find a place to stay. They also practice two strange, violent religions: the Hatters rule the day, and the Hooters rule the night. Both sects act in unusual ways, and seem to make a habit of burning and killing, for ritual or other reasons. When Finn comes to the rescue of a person the Hatters seem ready to kill, he finds that this is Sabatino Nucci's father, and despite their mutual antipathy, Finn ends up staying at the Nuccis' strange house, as he has no alternative.

Despite an almost light-hearted and playful tone, the book is full of grotesque and terrifying incidents and features: the Nuccis' bat-derived servant and their horrible food (such as turnip wine); the mad old man who seems to also be staying with the Nuccis; the constant threat of attack from almost any corner: if one of the Nuccis isn't threatening Finn and his companions, then the prejudiced citizens of Makasar, or bands of Foxers, or Sabatino's uncle Dr. Nicoretti are after him. Not to mention the ghosts he meets, nor the stress caused by Letitia Louise's oscillating moods, nor the acerbic banter with Julia Jessica Slagg. But the worst thing of all is the strange, almost living, machine in the bowels of the Nucci's house: a machine Nucci's father calls "The Prophecy Machine". This machine makes anyone who comes near it ill, and it seems to distort time, and it seems to be growing and growing, taking over the house.

This is a colourful story, full of unusual and imaginative bits. Though much of the story has a rather claustrophobic feel, it remains a good read, with a rousing conclusion, and the main characters are quite engaging. For all that, it's not as ambitious or as satisfying as the best of Neal Barrett's short work, such as "Stairs" and "Cush" and "Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus". It presents the idea of "enhanced animals", and shows the prejudice of "regular" humans against them, but that's just background. (Though Finn's character and feelings are very well-portrayed, particularly with regard to his love for Letitia Louise.) The strange society in Makasar is likewise presented and wondered at, but never explained or really explored. The central story is fun, but just a story. The Prophecy Machine is an enjoyable novel, but it's Neal Barrett Jr. at no more than half-throttle.

Ace Double Reviews, 17: Annihilation Factor, by Barrington J. Bayley/Highwood, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Ace Double Reviews, 17: Annihilation Factor, by Barrington J. Bayley/Highwood, by Neal Barrett, Jr. (#33710, 1972, $0.95)

a review by Rich Horton

(Covers by Enric Torres-Prat and Peter Lloyd)

This Ace Double looked particularly interesting to me, as Bayley and Barrett have both published outstanding stuff, and both are at their best quite notably quirky writers. However it must be said that neither of these novels represents its author at his best -- both are quite disappointing, really. Annihilation Factor is the longer story, at about 51,000 words, and it is an expansion of a 1964 New Worlds piece called "The Patch". (Bayley's other Ace Double half, The Star Virus, reviewed previously in this series, was also an expansion of an earlier New Worlds story,). Highwood is about 46,000 words long. Barrett also appeared in one other Ace Double, with his 1970 novel The Gates of Time.

I have compared Barrington J. Bayley to Charles Harness before, and I think the comparison holds up insofar as concerns the wackiness and imaginativeness of the concepts they build their books around. But they differ greatly in general attitude -- essentially, Bayley is extremely cynical, often dour (though on occasion almost whimsical); while Harness is very romantic. (Incidentally, I see from an interview on Juha Lindroos's excellent (though not updated since 2002) website The Astounding Worlds of Barrington J. Bayley that Bayley acknowledges the influence of Harness on his work.) Bayley remains an interesting author, though not a great one -- his prose is pedestrian, and (like Harness) his ideas sometimes seem simply too weird, too disconnected from any sort of consistent logic -- and the same goes for his plots. Bayley began publishing SF as a teen in the mid 50s, but his first novel was 1970's The Star Virus. He is probably best known for some novels published by DAW and sometimes Doubleday later in the 70s, into the 80s: Collision Course (1973), The Fall of Chronopolis (1974), The Soul of the Robot (1974), The Garments of Caean (1976), The Zen Gun (1982). After about 1985 he had difficulty placing further novels, and from then until last year his only novel to appear was the Warhammer tie-in Eye of Terror (1999). 2002 saw the publication by Wildside of two new novels (apparently dating to the late 90s): The Sinners of Erspia and The Great Hydration. He continued to publish short fiction, some quite good, almost all of it decidedly offbeat. "A Crab Must Try" won the BSFA short fiction award in 1996. Bayley died in 2008.

Annihilation Factor is set in a far future human empire riven by economic divisions and dynastic upheaval. It opens with a "young" (only 90) aristocrat visiting the "Pretender Prince" whose father was deposed by the current King. The aristocrat, Jundrak Sann, offers the Prince amnesty in return for aid against a mysterious quasi-living being, called "the Patch", that lives in space and has been devouring entire solar systems, leaving all inhabitants dead. But the Prince, fearing a trick, refuses. On Jundrak's return we are introduced to the corrupt nature of the Empire's society, in which aristocrats can live to be 600 or so while the poor live only as long as we do today. Jundrak himself is something of a mild iconoclast, as he has a lower class lover. But he is also a schemer, and in his role as the head of the Empire's research project into a new faster class of starships he has made arrangements to take control of the new improved fleet himself.

Into this society comes the only man ever to survive the Patch, a basically psychotic anarchist called Castor Krakhno. Krakhno preaches, basically, socialist anarchism, a virtuous position in this corrupt monarchy, but his true goal is the annihilation of all life, which is repugnant to him. His encounter with the Patch has given him superior mental powers that have led to his having considerable success fomenting rebellion. Also, the Pretender has had some military success against the King. But the Patch is on its way to the Pretender's system. And Jundrak is maneuvered by the Machiavellian chief of the King's security into trying to infiltrate Krakhno's organization.

It's all rather busy, and extremely cynical. Everyone is basically bad, though they have good points. Jundrak is the closest we have to a hero, but his character as presented is chaotic -- he's quite cynically evil when the plot demands it, but almost innocent and naive when the plot demands THAT. The resolution involves a few more twists, some of them just plain silly -- though the final fate of the revolutionaries is very well presented, surprising and logical. The story reads a bit slow as well -- I suspect the original version (which I have not seen) might have been the right length to support the basic ideas. It's not a terrible book, but it's not very good, certainly one of the least of Bayley's works.

Neal Barrett, Jr., started publishing short SF with stories in Galaxy and Amazing in 1960, and continued publishing regularly for about a decade, at which time he began selling novels, including the two Ace Double halves mentioned above, and the Aldair series for DAW. I'm not terribly familiar with his early work, but by all accounts it's fairly routine stuff. Then, someone once said, Barrett stood too long next to fellow Texan Howard Waldrop and just mutated. Beginning in the mid 80s he published a few novels and a number of short stories that are gloriously weird, poetic, loopily imagined -- just real neat stuff. Most notable probably are the novel Through Darkest America (1986), and the short stories "Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus" (1987, Nebula and Hugo nominee), "Stairs" (1988, one of my personal favorite stories ever), and "Cush" (1993). By the early 90s, however, he was concentrating on mystery novels, such as Pink Vodka Blues (1992), a scary mystery about a couple of alcoholics; and Skinny Annie Blues (1996), one of a series about the somewhat antiheroic Wiley Moss. Later he published a couple further unusual science fantasies beginning with The Prophecy Machine (2000). He died in 2014, at age 84.

Highwood is set on a planet, called Sequoia by humans, that is dominated by trees a few miles high. There is an intelligent humanoid race living in the trees, the Lemmits, who have an unusual social structure: the males and females live in separate groups, hating each other, only getting together irregularly for "Motherings". Hamby Flagg is the human representative on Sequoia, but he has issues -- he's a drunk who is down to his last couple of bottles of whiskey, and he's accompanied by an AI companion, a "psych-Bear", which uses sarcasm to try to keep him sane. New on the planet is the beautiful sociologist Kearney Wynn, who is determined to figure out the mysteries behind the unusual Lemmit culture, and who is also disgusted by Hamby Flagg, both his person and his sketchy reports.

Soon after Kearney's arrival, strange things begin happening. A Mothering is in the offing, but so is something stranger still -- a mutilated Lemmit delivers an ominous message that sends both the male and female groups from the tree occupied by Hamby and Kearney on a trek to another tree. Various disasters occur, including Kearney's near rape by the females who have adopted her, Ham's psych-Bear's apparent malfunctioning, Kearney's imprisonment, and the death of a tree. Eventually the two are forced to the deadly surface of the planet, where they make a very unexpected discovery.

I don't think the book works very well at all. It sets up an intriguing mystery concerning Lemmit society, but the eventual solution is unconvincing and very disappointing. Much of the action is disjoint, with lots of confusing jumps in the telling -- I wonder if the novel might not have been rather arbitrarily cut to fit the Ace Double format. And the main characters are not convincing. Kearney's sexual attitudes in particular are cringe-inducing, from her revulsion at the Lemmit's Lesbianism to her own personal ambitions, as shown in this passage from late in the book, a passage that I really would have thought unbelievable by 1972: "I didn't climb all over this damn planet for my health -- or for science, either, for that matter. I was looking for a man, Flagg. I didn't know that, of course, and I sure as hell wouldn't have admitted it to myself, but it's true, nevertheless. And now that I've found one, motheaten and grimy as you are, I kind of like what I've got." (To be fair, after first deciding that she must abandon her career on the grounds that she must give all her attention to Hamby, she later tentatively decides that since Hamby will allow it, she might continue to do science along with him.)

By all means people should search out latter-day Barrett -- the late 80s work in particular. But this early novel is not nearly as good, and not even a harbinger of the better things that he eventually did.

Birthday Review: Cetaganda and Diplomatic Immunity, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Today is Lois McMaster Bujold's birthday. I've enjoyed her novels immensely, particularly the earlier novels in the the Vorkosigan saga, and the fantasy quartet The Sharing Knife. In honor of her birthday, I'm reposting two reviews I did of a couple of the lesser Vorkosigan books. Alas, that! But those are the ones I reviewed. The first was posted on my old home page; and the second was one of the reviews I did for the fine UK magazine 3SF, edited by Liz Holliday.

TITLE: Cetaganda
AUTHOR: Lois McMaster Bujold

PUBLICATION: Baen, 1995

ISBN: 0671877011

The latest of Lois McMaster Bujold`s Miles Vorkosigan adventures, Cetaganda, is, by Bujold`s own testimony, a rather light-hearted romp, a bit of a step down in seriousness and apparent ambition from Barrayar and Mirror Dance, her most recent Vorkosigan novels.

This novel is set a few years prior to the action of Mirror Dance. Miles is 21. He and his amiably dim-witted (by Miles` standards) cousin, Ivan, are sent to the home planet of the Cetagandan empire to attend the funeral of the Cetagandan empress. (They are chosen to go on somewhat unconvincing grounds: when did Miles and Ivan get elected Vice-President anyway?) Naturally, no sooner have they arrived (indeed, slightly before their actual arrival) they encounter a mysterious character and come into possession of a mysterious object (in fact, a rather slimly disguised MacGuffin). Miles being Miles, he does not sensibly report the incident to the Barrayaran Ambassador, nor to the local Imperial Security agent (to be sure, conveniently for the purposes of the plot, this latter person is away on some vague assignment). Instead, Miles bamboozles Ivan into supporting him in an attempt to resolve what quickly becomes a very delicate situation, on his own.

The two face deadly dangers, encounter beautiful ladies of both of the Cetagandan upper classes, and eventually find themselves enmeshed in a plot which threatens Cetagandan internal stability (and thus Barrayaran security, as Cetaganda is a traditional enemy.) A number of the details of the plot and the Cetagandan custom upon which the plot turns are unconvincing, but the book is exciting and entertaining and reads very well. Romance is somewhat backgrounded, although Miles does fall in love (hopelessly) with the most beautiful woman he`s ever seen (why does such a clever individual as Miles seem consistently to rate female beauty so highly? Though to be sure, he is only 21, and I guess us guys are guys, huh?!), and there is an almost perfunctory romance between two minor characters. (Ivan, to be sure, is quite amusingly involved with some beautiful Cetagandan women, and Bujold does provide one quite funny incident involving him and an anti-aphrodisiac: another quite pointed and appropriate (I suppose) comment on male-female relationships results.)

The most serious side of the book is an exploration of Cetagandan culture, which is built around genetic engineering of themselves. This culture consists of the haut, who are the true rulers, and the most highly "engineered", the ghem, who provide the military might, and who are less "engineered" and less controlled (partly to allow for the spontaneous generation of potentially useful traits), the ba, neuter servants who also serve as useful safe experimental objects for genetic changes (safe because they are neutered and couldn`t pass on harmful traits), and, presumably, large middle- and under-classes of mostly normal humans. This society is quite interesting, and Bujold makes some subtle and intriguing observations on the sources of power, and the different kinds of power, in particular the power divisions between the males and females of both the haut and the ghem. However, I think a proper exploration of this society would require a good deal more space, and I would quibble with some of the assumptions, in particular, the Cetagandans don`t seem different enough to me to be the result of centuries of genetic engineering. Also, they seem to be optimizing for feminine beauty (by "normal" standards, yet!), even while sex is completely divorced (no pun intended) from their procreation efforts. I find that hard to believe.

All in all, this is certainly an enjoyable book, though not her best. And yes, it does have closure!

Finally, I couldn`t leave without citing the one quotation in the book from my favorite Bujold character, Miles` mother Cordelia, on the subject of how a radical egalitarian (such as Cordelia) could adapt to life in an elitist, aristocratic society like Barrayar`s: "An egalitarian finds it easy to adapt to life in an aristocratic society, as long as she gets to be an aristocrat."

That`s not exact, but you get the point.

Diplomatic Immunity, by Lois McMaster Bujold, Baen, Riverdale, NY, 2002, ISBN 0-7434-3533-8, $25.00, 320 pages

Lois McMaster Bujold's Diplomatic Immunity is the latest of her extended series about Miles Vorkosigan, an aristocrat from the rather autocratic planet Barrayar. After a spectacular if often chaotic earlier career, his life has settled down to some extent. He is an Imperial Auditor, directly responsible to his friend the Emperor, with the job of investigating situations that might be rather politically sensitive; and he has also recently married. As Miles returns from a honeymoon trip, the Emperor reluctantly orders him to try to solve a problem for Barrayar at Graf Station in Quaddiespace, the remote system inhabited by the "Quaddies", genetically modified four-armed humans who were introduced in Bujold's first award-winning novel, 1988's Falling Free, and who haven't been prominently featured since then. It seems that a Barrayaran crew escorting a group of merchant ships has gotten in trouble with the Quaddies, and the merchant fleet has been detained. Profits are at stake, as is Barrayar's reputation, and possibly their right to trade in Quaddiespace.

Miles shows up and finds that the situation is more complex than expected. One Barrayaran crew member has disappeared, and another apparently wishes to desert. The Quaddies are furious, and the merchants are furious. Luckily for Miles, he has an unexpected friend on Graf Station: Bel Thorne, the Betan hermaphrodite who worked with Miles early in his career, and who still secretly works for Barrayar. With Bel's help, he starts to get to the bottom of the various mysteries, only to find that an even worse crisis looms, involving the possibility of war with Barrayar's traditional enemy, Cetaganda, as well as a threat to destroy Graf Station.

Bujold is always a readable writer, and she tells a fairly exciting story here. But some of the energy of the earlier Miles books is lacking. One wonders if her interest in the series is declining, or if the newly settled nature of Miles life (his stable job, his happy marriage) has leached the tension from the overall series story arc. This novel is enjoyable but not exceptional, and the ending is reasonable but in many ways very pat, very convenient. Minor Bujold.

Old Bestseller Review: The Thief of Bagdad, by Achmed Abdullah

Old Bestseller Review: The Thief of Bagdad, by Achmed Abdullah

a review by Rich Horton

This book doesn't appear on bestseller lists, but I'm sure it sold quite well, as it was the novelization of a very popular film, the original Thief of Bagdad, a silent film made by Douglas Fairbanks in 1924. The Fairbanks movie is considered his masterpiece, and one of the great silent films of all time. The 1940 talkie remake, produced by Alexander Korda, is regarded with similar respect. Both films were truly groundbreaking for their special effects.

This was relatively early in the history of movie novelizations (the first I can find were about a decade earlier). My edition is from A. L. Burt, by arrangement with H. K. Fly, which was a firm noted for play scenarios and novelizations of plays, and thus presumably a natural source for movie novelizations. It is illustrated with a few stills from the film. The byline is given "By Achmed Abdullah, writer of many lands and many peoples", and then credited further as follows: "Based on Douglas Fairbanks' Fantasy of the Arabian Nights, by Elton Thomas (copyright 1924 by Douglas Fairbanks) and a short version by Lotta Woods (also copyright by Fairbanks)". As far as I can tell, Elton Thomas is a pseudonym for Fairbanks, though Lotta Woods may be another person. The conception, apparently, was all due to Fairbanks, based on several stories from the Thousand Nights and a Night.

Achmed Abdullah (1881-1945) was an interesting person. He emigrated to the US sometime in the teens, and became a writer, of short fiction (especially for pulps such as Argosy and Blue Book), of plays, and of screenplays. He was once nominated for an Academy Award, for his screenplay for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. His biography before he reached the US is less well-attested. He claimed to have been born in Russia to an Orthodox family (supposedly a relative of the Czar, but there is no record of a Romanoff cousin matching the details he gives), but to have been raised by his uncle, a Muslim. He said he moved to England and attended Eton and Oxford (neither school has any record of his attendance), and later joined the British Army, reaching the rank of Colonel. In the US, he married three times, and the book at hand is dedicated to his second wife, Jean Wick.

The book itself is a rather mixed bag. It does seem to be quite directly based on the movie. Abdullah is a competent writer, in a sometimes stilted style. At times the description reaches nearly Fanthorpean levels of excess. But at other times it is impressive, and the imagination shown is pretty cool. Although, to be sure, that imagination probably should be credited to Fairbanks and, even more, to the writers of the Arabian Nights stories. (Scheherezade?)

The story opens in Bagdad, with Ahmed, the eponymous Thief of Bagdad, engaging in a couple of thefts, eventually finding himself on the run, which leads him to the house of the Caliph. And there he gets a glimpse of the Caliph's beautiful daughter, Zobeid, and of course he falls immediatly in love with her. His mentor, the Bird of Evil, hatches a plan to get access to her -- and as it happens on that very day three foreign princes are coming to woo her: the Prince of Persia, the Prince of India, and the Prince of the Mongols. Ahmed poses as the Prince of the Isles, and one thing after another, the Princess falls in love with him as well. (Likely the various faults of the other suitors contribute!) But Ahmed abandons his plan to drug her, and determines to earn her love honestly, and confesses to being a thief. He is taken, and sentenced to death -- but Zobeid arranges his escape. Then, faced with the impossible choice between the corpulent Prince of Persia, the overproud Prince of India, and the treacherous and warlike Prince of the Mongols, she arranges a contest -- whoever can bring her the rarest treasure after seven months shall gain her hand.

So all the Princes head off to find a rare treasure. And Ahmed goes on that search as well. Key for him is his decision to commit himself to Islam, while before he had been a scoffer and a skeptic. So his journey takes him to the Valley of Seven Temptations, the Hill of Eternal Fire, and through other ordeals, until he finally reaches the Sea of Resignation to Fate, wherein he is guided to find a cloak of invisibility and a special silver box. Meanwhile the other Princes find certain rarities as well -- the Persian finds a flying carpet, the Indian finds an eye that can see anywhere, and the Mongol finds an apple that can restore life to anyone from any illness.

The Mongol has other plans as well -- he sneaks his army into Bagdad, to conquer the town by force if he does not get the Princess Zobeid's hand. And he arranges for the Princess to be poisoned, so that his apple will restore her to life. It turns out, however, that just as his apple is important, so too are the Indian's eye -- which reveals that Zobeid's illness has reached a critical stage -- and the Persian's flying carpet, which brings them to the castle in time to save her life. It seems Zobeid still has an impossible choice -- and she is waiting, hope against hope, for Ahmed. So the Mongol Prince unleashes his soldiers ...

Well, you probably know how it ends. Really, despite some silliness and extreme overwriting, this was a reasonably entertaining novel. Better still, I am sure, are both movies! My son Geoff reports that he's seen the Fairbanks movie, and recalls it as pretty good. And the Korda movie looks good as well. So I figure I'll try them both soon enough.

Birthday Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

Today is Susanna Clarke's birthday, so I thought it appropriate to repost the review I did of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell when it first came out. I loved that novel then, and I still love it -- it stands as one of the truly exceptional fantasies of the 21st Century.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

a review by Rich Horton

This novel has received a great deal of notice -- indeed hype. It has been called "Harry Potter for Adults", a rather unhelpful designation that reflects two things -- it shares a publisher with the Harry Potter books (Bloomsbury), and it does feature magic in something otherwise resembling the England we know. Neil Gaiman blurbed it as "unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years" -- a blurb that would be more defensible if the word "unquestionably" was omitted. One might perhaps conclude that this very fine book is indeed the finest English fantasy of the past 70 years, but I think one first would have to at least "question" the status of Tolkien and Peake -- to name the first two writers that leaped to my mind. Gaiman's 70 year period was evidently a nod to Hope Mirrlees's quite wonderful Lud-in-the-Mist -- a novel I do recommend people seek out.

I had earlier read a few of Clarke's short stories, those that appeared in the Starlight series of original anthologies. They were among my favorites stories in each of those book -- quite lovely and witty pieces. They are set in the same milieu as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but none of them are actually part of the novel.

As Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell opens, we are introduced to a society of theoretical magicians based in Yorkshire. It seems that the practice of magic has disappeared from England in the previous couple of centuries. At one time magic was very common, and indeed the Northern part of England was ruled by a powerful magician, a boy raised in Fairie, called the Raven King or John Uskglass. The magicians who practiced during his 300 year reign were called "Aureate" magicians, and their successors "Argentine", but nothing remains of magical knowledge but a number of books of questionable authority, and occasional stories of the appearance of fairy roads and suchlike. Then a man named Mr Norrell makes a proposition to the Yorkshire society -- he will demonstrate to them that he is an actual magician. If he succeeds, they must all agree to renounce their claim to be magicians. Of course he does, quite spectacularly.

Mr Norrell, it transpires, wishes to revive the practice of English magic. But in a very limited way -- he seems to want no rivals. He buys up and hides as many reliable books of magic as he can find. He actively tries to suppress other magicians by such means as his deal with the Yorkshire society. And he is determined in particular to denigrate the memory of John Uskglass, and to avoid the Raven King's sort of magic and especially any dealings with fairies. However, he has some difficulty in getting an in with the powerful men of England -- to whom he hopes to offer his services. Only be bringing back the fiancé of one influential MP from the dead can he establish connections. And unfortunately he can only do that by dealing with a fairy -- and dealings with fairies are indeed dangerous.

Mr Norrell's bargain with the fairy works out very ill for the young lady he has revived, as well as for another couple of people. But other than that he is soon very successfully aiding the English side in the war against Buonaparte's France. Then another magician appears, a dilettantish young man named Jonathan Strange. Strange agrees to become Mr Norrell's pupil, but is soon chafing at Norrell's refusal to let him see many of his best books, and at his fears of dealing with fairies or studying John Uskglass. Strange also develops his independence by spending some years with Wellington in the Peninsula, aiding the Army by magic. After the war Strange breaks with Norrell, and threatens to publish a vast History of English Magic. But Norrell has his own ideas -- and more tragically, Strange's wife becomes a victim. The conclusion brings together, in a very satisfying way, Strange, Norrell, the enigmatic fairy that Norrell had summoned, the fairy's victims, Norrell's intriguing servant John Childermass, other magicians, and of course John Uskglass.

I found it completely delightful. Readers have noted its extreme length (about a third of a million words -- nearly 800 rather full pages). It is true that the plot moves slowly, and one can readily see ways that the book might be cut without losing the essentials of the story. But I don't think I would like it better cut. Clarke's witty voice is ever a delight, and I enjoyed all the meanderings. Her descriptions of magic are very effective -- there is a real sense of otherworldliness, of caprice, and too the effects are quite imaginative. Her characters, if perhaps a bit thin in places, are still interesting. For all the plot moves slowly, its resolution is as I said quite satisfying, and somewhat surprising. I was moved on occasion, laughing quite often, and never bored. (Which is not to say the novel is a fast or facile read -- it is easy to put down, but you will want to pick it up again. It is a book to live with for a few weeks, not to gulp down in a few sittings.) Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell stands as my favorite novel of 2004.

Birthday Review: Quicksilver and Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson was born on my first Halloween -- October 31, 1959, when I was all of 26 days old. In honor of his birthday, then, here are two reviews I did long ago, of his novels Quicksilver and Cryptonomicon.

First, Quicksilver:

Review Date: 12 April 2004

Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson
William Morrow, New York, NY, 2003, 927 pages, Hardcover, US$27.95, ISBN:0-380-97742-7
a review by Rich Horton

What to say about Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver (first of The Baroque Trilogy) that has not already been said? It is largely as has been reported: overlong, rambling, annoying anachronistic, not terribly well plotted. Yet for all that I rather liked it. I certainly didn't love it, and it is by no means as good as Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash, but it is a generally enjoyable and interesting hodgepodge of political intrigue, early scientific inquiry, disease and grime, and eccentricity. For a negative review with which I almost entirely agree in specifics, I suggest Adam Roberts's. All I can say is that I have little objection to Roberts's arguments, but that I came away from the book having enjoyed myself.

The story is told in three long books. (The entire novel is some 380,000 words, so each book is a substantial novel-length in itself. And of course Quicksilver is only the first of a trilogy!) The first book is about Daniel Waterhouse and his relationship with Isaac Newton. Waterhouse is one of a prominent Puritan family, who have wielded some influence during Cromwell's Protectorship. But the story really takes place as Waterhouse goes up to Cambridge, just after the Restoration of the Monarchy. Daniel's loyalties are divided -- he is still his father's son, but hardly a true believer in the Puritan religious doctrines. At Cambridge he befriends the very strange and otherworldly Isaac Newton. Daniel himself is presented as a competent natural philosopher but nothing special -- he is there as a witness to genius embodied by Newton (and others such as Hooke, Huygens, and Leibniz). Daniel becomes a minor political player, Secretary of the Royal Society, sort of a tame Puritan in the Royal cabinet. This section is told on two timelines -- one following Daniel from youth to near middle-age, the other a rather pointless account of Daniel beginning a much later (1714) journey back from Massachusetts (where he seems to have founded MIT) to London in order to testify in a dispute between Newton and Leibniz about the invention of the calculus. This last thread is, I think, a complete mistake -- it does absolutely nothing for the current book. I am sure it will be picked up in later books, and probably be important, but it's just so many wasted pages here.

The second book abandons Daniel entirely to tell the story of two rather lower-class individuals. Jack Shaftoe (the names Shaftoe and Waterhouse will of course be familiar to readers of Cryptonomicon) is a Vagabond -- at first an orphaned boy making a living by jumping on the legs of hanged men to hasten their death and reduce their agony, later a rather lazy mercenary fighting in various wars on the continent. He comes to Vienna, under siege by the Ottomans, and by happenstance manages to rescue a beautiful virgin named Eliza, a native of Qwlghm (a fictional island off the coast of England also from Cryptonomicon). Eliza had been kidnapped from the shores of Qwlghm and sold to the Ottoman Sultan, who fortunately was preserving her to be a gift to one of his generals after the presumed success of the Vienna campaign. Eliza's experience has given her one consuming passion -- the eradication of slavery. Jack (who is nicknamed Half-Cocked Jack due to an unfortunate earlier surgical procedure -- hence Eliza's virginity is safe from him -- though they find other ways to have a good time) and Eliza wander back across Europe to the Netherlands, meeting Leibniz along the way and having a variety of adventures. Finally Eliza is established in Amsterdam, becoming a financial genius and a spy for William of Orange, while Jack makes his way to Paris and eventually to a seat as a galley slave.

The third book switches between Eliza and Daniel, and in this book there is a somewhat coherent plot. Basically, by now the book becomes the story (told from an unusual angle) of England's Glorious Revolution, when William of Orange and his wife Mary take the crown of England from the hated Catholic James II. Eliza's role takes her to Versailles where we see the court of the Sun King, while Daniel plots against James from within his cabinet. The book ends more or less with the successful conclusion of the Glorious Revolution.

As I say above -- there is much wrong with this book. It is too long. Though I was never precisely bored I was often not particularly concerned as to when I would next pick up the book. (It took me the entire month of March to read it.) It is full of very jarring anachronisms, mostly in the speech of the characters. (The events and devices described are as far as I know all essentially real, except for the irruptions of the long-lived alchemist Enoch Root.) Stephenson has defended this by claiming the book is written for 21st Century readers -- if so, then why the absurd spelling tics, such as phanatique for fanatic? In the end the anachronisms simply annoyed me, pulled me out of the book. The overall plot, to the extent I could detect one, is hardly advanced at all in this book, though I think an argument can be made that there is a significant plot thread (taking us from the Restoration to the Glorious Revolution) that is resolved in this book and works fairly well. The characters are to some extent grotesques but mostly interesting grotesques -- they are, I suppose, the main reason I ended up liking the book on balance.

(And all that said, for a book set in the same time period, I recommend much more highly William Makepeace Thackeray's Henry Esmond.)

Second, Cryptonomicon:

Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is a huge book (about 425000 words). It's not really SF, though it hovers on the edge of being SF.  It's a very absorbing book, and a fascinating book.  Also, its strengths are those that lend themselves to a long novel: it is continually interesting, on the one hand; and on the other hand the plot is a minor source of the interest.  Thus there aren't boring parts that you have to wade through to get to the end: and getting to the end isn't as much the "goal". 

It's told on two timelines.  One is set during World War II.  Two main characters are followed in this thread: Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a math genius and friend of Alan Turing who ends up assigned to the joint US/British codebreaking effort; and Bobby Shaftoe, a Marine who ends up assigned to a unit Waterhouse deems necessary: a unit which will fake evidence that the Allies had other means than codebreaking to allow them to achieve some of the successes they really achieved because they could read the Axis codes.  Thus the Germans and Japanese hopefully won't change their codes.  For some time this thread deals with the codebreaking end of things, but after a while interest begins to focus on a scheme by the Germans and Japanese to hide a bunch of gold in secure caches in the Philippines and elsewhere.  This introduces a couple more viewpoint characters: Japanese engineer Goto Dengo, German U boat captain Gunter Bischoff, and another member of Bobby Shaftoe's special unit, the Australian priest Enoch Root.

The other thread is present-day.  Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse' grandson, Randy Waterhouse, is part of a startup company trying to establish a "data haven" in a small island country in the Pacific.  This work takes him to Manila, where he meets Bobby Shaftoe's granddaughter, America (Amy) Shaftoe.  (Neither Bobby Shaftoe or Lawrence Waterhouse ever revealed to their children what they did during the War, so Randy and Amy have no idea that their grandfathers knew each other.)  Randy's efforts brush him against some organized criminals.  Also, they find something interesting in Manila Bay while laying cable, something which Randy recognizes as having to do with his grandfather.  Soon he is involved in a race to find one of the caches of Axis gold, and his success may depend on breaking a code his grandfather couldn't break.

All this is a fairly fascinating story by itself, with lots of action and heroism, but what makes the book really work is the clever stuff Stephenson does with infodumps.  He tells us about Unix systems, cryptanalysis, eating Cap'n Crunch properly, proper computer security, mining engineering, cannibals on New Guinea, Douglas MacArthur's relationship with the Marines, computer games, Japanese atrocities during the War, and much more.  And he's a very funny writer as well.  For example, he has an extended joke about an obscure (i.e., nonexistent in our history) set of islands belonging to the UK, with a language all their own, such that, for instance, Smith is spelled cCmmcdn, or something.  Of course this is relevant to cryptography.  But it's also very funny.  The characters are involving, if perhaps just a bit on the bestsellerish side: that is, they are a bit on the supercompetent side (though also with real weaknesses).  I really really enjoyed this book.  I'm not sure whether to nominate it for a Hugo, though: it's definitely one of the 5 best books I've read from 1999, but is it close enough to SF?