We gaped at each other. I stood up to peer over the booth partitions and saw patrons crying into their phones. We left immediately. The woman at the register told us how sometimes she pilfered from the tip jar. Her eyes and nose were not inflamed, so whatever vector was involved in dispersing the TC, it wasn't our pollen. On the sidewalk outside, a guy on a mountain bike and a woman with a shopping cart were trying to unburden themselves to each other. So it probably wasn't the coffee or restaurant food either. In fact, all up and down the street we saw penitents fessing up to one another.
G craned his neck and peered into the sky. “Aerial spraying?” he said. “An area-wide dragnet?” We wondered if we were the target. But we didn't stick around to find out.
A woman was slumped against the bumper of our car. She looked at us and said, “Is this all I get?” I helped her to her feet. “I mean, I know I'm ugly. I've known that since I was a child, but does it mean my life has to be so small and empty and meaningless?"
I turned her toward the intersection and told her to find a taxi and go home. And if she had a phone, to use it.
We jumped into the car, G behind the wheel. “Where to?” he yelled, pulling into traffic.
I told him to drive back to the warehouse. No matter how the TC was being dispersed, our hazmat gear there had protected us. My plan was for us to suit up before evacuating the area. Then my phone rang, a call from C. I asked him where he was.
He said, “I feel like telling you that ten years ago I acquired a complete microfiche set of engineering plans for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline."
"I don't care about that. Where are you?"
"At the warehouse. Listen, I sold the plans for a shitload of money. You want to know who to?"
I ordered him to destroy his phone and stay put till someone came for him. Then I hung up and told G to forget the warehouse and head for the bridge instead. He made a sharp U-turn and nearly hit an SUV. He had to brake so hard he stalled the engine. But instead of restarting it, he just sat there staring out the windshield. In the back seat, B said, “They showed us color photos of aborted fetuses. They said a baby as old as mine already had perfect little fingernails."
I ordered her to shut up and Gus to drive, but he turned around in his seat and said, “I saw my father kill my mother, and I lied to the police about it."
"Drive! Drive!"
"I was only five years old. He made it out to look like an accident, but he never fooled me."
I ordered them to hand over their cell phones, but Bella dialed a number, and as it rang she told us, “And perfect little eyelashes.” When her party answered, she began to weep.
"Stop crying!” I barked at her. But she didn't stop, and Gus joined her. A sight to behold—Gus Ostermann pressing the heels of his hands against his temples. “All the poor dogs!” he cried. “And all the poor cats."
We sat there for a long time, traffic piling up and passing around us as we talked to the people we loved. Before army intelligence arrived, I received a text message from the ACC. A single word, backed by the authority of the core group—"JUG.” Short for jugulate, which was what they were directing me to do in order to protect the ACC. I couldn't allow us to be taken alive, that much was clear. I have sworn an oath to lay down my life for the group, and I will, only not right now. Right now I actually feel like answering a few questions.
My name is William B. Boothtipple. My number is 973-555-0979. If it's busy, leave voice mail or keep trying; no doubt I'm on the other line spilling my guts.
And now some shout-outs:
—To Melody and her awesome kid, Kimmie, wherever you are and whoever you've become. Duane wasn't the only one you bewitched; I think of you guys all the time. If I had known how much I'd miss you, I would never have let you go.
—To Osama. Hey, man, seriously, phone home. It's been years since they've heard your voice, and everyone's worried sick.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Books To Look For by Charles de Lint
The Accidental Time Machine, by Joe Haldeman, Ace, 2007, $23.95.
When I'm in the mood for some good hard sf, nothing makes me happier than to have a new Joe Haldeman book on hand. He's such a treasure in this genre. In a Haldeman book, you always get great characters, real honest-to-goodness fresh speculative ideas, and a story worthy enough to hold the two together. I can't remember ever being disappointed by one of his books, and there aren't many writers of whom I can say that—in or out of the genre.
With my fondness for time travel stories, I was particularly delighted with this latest novel of his.
Of course, Haldeman being Haldeman, you don't get a traditional time travel story. His character makes jumps into the future rather than to the past: small ones at first—so small that they're barely noticeable—but the time and distance grows exponentially with each trip, so soon we're in the far far future.
It begins when Matt Fuller, a research assistant at MIT, accidentally puts together a simple calibrator that disappears when he hits the reset button, only to reappear a second later. With a little experimentation and calculation, Fuller discovers that every time he hits the reset button, the machine goes missing twelve times longer than the time before.
Fuller's not at a good point in his life. His girlfriend has dumped him and he's lost his job (to the guy his girlfriend dumped him for), so he figures he has nothing to lose by testing the machine on himself. He borrows a vintage car from a local drug dealer, stocks it with provisions and the pet-store turtle on which he first tried the machine, and sends himself into the future—where he's arrested for the murder of the car's owner who dropped dead when his vehicle disappeared before his eyes.
So Fuller does the only thing he can: he uses the machine to go further into the future.
The futures he visits are more commentaries on present day society, rather than Haldeman's trying to predict what the future will actually be like. But the science sounds good, and using other worlds to comment on one's present is a viable, informative, and entertaining literary device with roots that go back to Jonathan Swift, and probably further. And like the best of such literary forerunners, Haldeman doesn't sacrifice story or character to make his points.
The Accidental Time Machine is first and foremost a terrific sf adventure story. Everything else is just icing on an already delicious cake.
* * * *
Blaze, by Richard Bachman (Stephen King), Scribner, 2007, $25.
It's hard to imagine that an author as prolific as Stephen King, with as many books as he has published, could have one more trunk novel lying around, but according to his foreword, that's what Blaze is. What I don't understand is King's somewhat apologetic introduction to it in that same foreword.
Because this is an absolute delight of a book. It's a tragedy (in the classical sense of the word), yes, though it couldn't be anything but, given the lead character, his background, and the story. Still, it ranks among my favorite King stories, ones like “The Body,” “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” The Green Mile, Hearts in Atlantis, and the recent The Colorado Kid.
I really like it when King tells a smaller story, when he gets right into some little corner of the world as seen by one individual.
Here that individual is Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., known as Blaze. We meet him talking to his dead partner George (who could be a real ghost, could be just in Blaze's head—the reader has to decide), vowing to pull off the one last score that they'd been planning since before George died: the kidnapping of a baby heir worth millions.
The story goes back and forth between the kidnapping and Blaze's youth, both storylines equally compelling, both enriching the other.
As a kid, Blaze's father threw him down the stairs to land on his head, then threw him down again. Blaze grows up slow-minded, a huge bulk of a kid who grows into a giant of a man with a big dent in his skull. He is formed by his years being raised by the state, but never loses the sweetness that lies at his heart. When he goes wrong, it's
because those around him—particularly George, whose name recalls George Milton of Of Mice and Men—use him in their criminal schemes.
Blaze never really cared one way or another about his misdemeanors. But then he meets George, someone who, for the first time, accepts him as an equal. Who trusts him and treats him fairly. We know, as readers peering between the lines, that George isn't as altruistic as Blaze thinks he is, but it would be impossible to convince Blaze otherwise.
By the time you're a third of the way into the book, you completely understand how this gentle giant could go through with the kidnapping plan. The oddest thing is how, you're sort of rooting for him, even though what he's doing is utterly and inexcusably wrong.
Therein the tragedy.
King's writing is restrained throughout, but this isn't a story that needs the big scares or gross-outs to be powerful. And as it barrels along to its inevitable conclusion, you can't condone Blaze's actions, but you sure wish things could turn out otherwise. That the simple, sweet boy he was could have had a chance to have a larger life than the narrow confines of the one he was given.
This might be a trunk novel, revised and updated, but King has nothing to be embarrassed about because it really does rank among his best books.
* * * *
Strays, by Ron Koertge, Candlewick Press, 2007, $16.99.
"So where are you staying?” the dog asks.
"With some people who take care of strays."
"Like the pound?"
"Kind of."
This is easily one of my favorite books so far for this year. It's a slender exploration of a kid dealing with the death of his parents and having to go into state-run foster homes. He's a bit of a loser—was never liked at his old school, he's awkward and uncomfortable around his peers, and because his parents ran a pet store, he was made the brunt of many jokes about smelling like animals and the like. He doesn't expect anything to change just because he's going to a new school, even though nobody there knows anything about him.
Oh, and he can talk to animals, and they talk back to him.
While the quick plot synopsis above makes this sound like a downer of a book, it's really anything but. And I don't mean that it's some after-school, feel-good movie-of-the-week take on a difficult subject either.
Here's what I loved about the book:
Though sixteen-year-old Ted O'Connor is a loser, Koertge writes him with such skill that we have sympathy, rather than impatience, with his situation. We genuinely like him and root for him, even when he doesn't stand up for himself the way we want him to. And the character always feels real—from the usual teen anxieties, to how he's dealing with his parents’ death; parents who argued a lot and while they obviously cared for him, worked him hard in the pet store and never saw how unhappy his life was.
The prose is a delight: lean, but without a nuance missing, while the dialogue crackles with authenticity without ever falling into the easy predictability of the so-called “authentic” dialogue you might hear on a TV show. This is the way kids talk and interact with each other, and it's beautifully portrayed.
But it's how Koertge handles Ted's ability to communicate with animals that sets this book above so many of its peers, and I recommend it to all new fantasy writers (and established ones, too) to see how well this can be done. It's never twee, it's never rationalized, it's not in his head, and how it plays into the end of the book is an absolutely brilliant analogy of the passage from childhood to adulthood.
There are other things that I loved about this book—many other things, subtle nuances, great narrative choices—but frankly, I'd rather you discovered them on your own.
While I suppose this is aimed at a YA audience, it's really just a book with a young protagonist that I think anyone, of any age, will appreciate and enjoy.
Very highly recommended.
* * * *
Material to be considered for review in this column should be sent to Charles de Lint, P. O. Box 9480, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 3V2.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Musing on Books by Michelle West
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, DAW, 2007, $24.99.
* * * *
Thirteen, by Richard Morgan, Del Rey, 2007, $24.99.
I'm sure you're all familiar with reader fatigue. It's the malaise that causes you to glance at a book, sigh, and put it down, having skimmed perhaps the back cover blurb or the inside flap, without any interest at all in the words that have managed to penetrate the fog. It feels a little like boredom, but is more accurately the inability to engage with the printed page. In general, we blame this on the book, or what we assume the book is about—which is to say, the same-old, same-old.
Any type of book, any genre, can engender this feeling, and when caught in its grip, the reader approaches everything with a somewhat jaded eye. At its worst, it can cause you to forget why exactly it is you want to read in the first place.
Let me make this clear: I used to place blame on the books, but I've come to realize it's probably me. I'm feeling somewhat jaded, and I want something, but my ability to engage with text at this point is rather minimal. When I'm in this mood, I've given up on looking for emotional delight. Or emotional anything, really. If the words fail to somehow grab me, I move on, restlessly grazing. (No, I'm not going to carry that particular analogy any further.)
But if a book I approach with a certain sense of gloom does somehow manage to catch the attention that is already flagging before I've turned to page one, it feels like a revelation. And if it continues to hold me, or surprise me, if it gets under my rather thick skin in some way, it reminds me of why I read in the first place.
So: this month's column, and the two very different books herein.
There seems to be some general agreement that a book should start in the middle of action, should move quickly, should be easily absorbed. But Rothfuss's opening scene, a one-page prologue, does the opposite. There is no action; there is, rather, description of inaction, of, in fact, silence. And the silence takes place in a quiet, under-populated inn. It's all nuance.
The inn is owned by Kote; his single employee is Bast. And into the lives of these two men comes the Chronicler, a man who's made it his life to discover—and write—the truth. The Chronicler is looking for Kvothe, the Kingkiller. He isn't blind and he isn't a man who reveres myth. He knows that the truth is both less than myth, and in some complicated way, more. He understands people, and in some way, he understands how to get them to talk to him. And if Kote is at first reluctant to speak of the past, in the end, he relents, and in relenting, he gives us the book: The first day of the Kingkiller Chronicles. Because Kote is, of course, the Kvothe of myth.
Rothfuss's writing is enough to make me weep. I want to say with envy, but I think most writers come to writing through reading, and it is impossible, in the end, not to read Rothfuss as a reader; to be drawn into his story, and Kvothe's; to see the present as it is, and the past as it unfolds. He takes his time, and he draws his characters—bit players and central figures—with care. No voice is the same, and no voice seems to speak from some authorial dictate. Even the backstory of the world is filtered through the men who come to the tavern night after night. They are both familiar tropes and distinctive characters.
Kvothe was born to the Ruh, a traveling troupe of actors who had, among their many viewers, high nobility and commoners alike. He was educated, and learned to read, to write, and above all to question. He was quick but young, and always a bit odd. He might have remained in ignorance of magic if not for a chance encounter with an Arcanist who would eventually join the Ruh in their travels. Abenthy becomes the first of his many teachers. And Kvothe learns quickly.
Magic is a lot like math, in Rothfuss's world—or at least the beginnings of it are. This frustrates Kvothe a great deal, because in his dreams, magic is myth, and he, like any child, wants to be larger than life.
But there is magic, in Rothfuss's world; there is the inexplicable wild
ness of a power that is not confined to normal life or thought; there is history, and tragedy, in a past that is only remembered in story or song, and perhaps not even then. And Kvothe will chase it, for different reasons, throughout the course of his early life. That life starts on the open road and winds its way toward the city in which the University lies waiting.
I want to say more about that life, but I can't do it justice, and although I don't care about spoilers at all, many of you do. Suffice it to say that any plot synopsis of the story would do it such a grave injustice that I'm not even tempted to try.
Most of the book is a first person narrative because most of the book is Kvothe's account, as told to the Chronicler.
You could tell a story in a much smaller number of pages. But you couldn't tell this story with this much grace or power. Rothfuss reminds me not only of why I read, but why I keep returning to High Fantasy—I'm looking for books like Name of the Wind.
The Richard Morgan novel is nothing at all like the Rothfuss. Where Rothfuss is graceful and nuanced, Morgan is like a slap in the face. Or ten. His writing is sharp, edgy, visceral. His characters are almost entirely free of sentiment. His world has that kind of worn, run-down feel that was captured so successfully on screen in Bladerunner.
I admit that had anyone told me what this novel was about before I picked it up, I would have passed. And I also admit that, had the Canadian/UK edition title of the novel not been Black Man, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. My first thought when I was unpacking the book in the store was, “that's a brave title.” My second thought was, “Maybe it's not as political a statement as it seems.” And my third was, “Oh, yes it is."
I started at the beginning, because I sometimes do that, and my reaction was: “Psycho-killer with questionable sanity on a spaceship.” I don't in general read serial killer novels. I don't in general read horror novels. The opening to this one felt like both. But I was curious. The reading for the first few pages was entirely an intellectual exercise. I wanted to see where the book went.
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