Down on the Farm & the Alien Body-snatchers' Luxury Submarine

World Made by Hand imagines a near future America where oil and gasoline are unavailable, nuclear bombs have destroyed Los Angeles and Washington D.C., and diseases like the “Mexican Flu” have ravaged the population. People no longer travel farther from home than they can walk; unable to depend on electricity, they farm and scavenge their former homes and buildings for materials to create “by hand” a new life that looks a lot like that of the first colonists and pioneers. The small town of Union Grove has been just getting by for years when a group of suspicious out-of-towners (the New Faith “cult” led by Brother Jobe of Lynchburg, Virginia) arrives and when local laborer Shawn Watling is murdered by a trailerpark tough from the crew of Wayne Karp, who runs the local dump (from which precious supplies are regularly excavated). Soon software-executive-turned-carpenter Robert Earle finds himself elected mayor and sent on a trip down the Hudson to Albany, a city he hasn’t seen in years. 

There’s a thoughtful, matter-of-fact tone to the prose. Kunstler’s characters don’t dodge difficult issues; they think about whether faith is possible in their ravaged world and even explore unconventional connections as they try to find meaning in the lives and survival, but what might be histrionic in a typical postapocalyptic page-turner is contemplative here. The descriptions of how people make a living (what they farm; how they can still get running water but need to keep the system in constant repair; how the doctor invests in growing marijuana and opium poppies; how they make matches and fiddle strings) are fascinating, along with the details of how they incorporate surviving mass-produced luxury items (pen nibs are valued; they can make their own ink) and recycle raw materials such as metals and plastics. A similar attention is given to communal life. In Union Grove, the Congregational church is the center of the community, and live music is mostly hymns or even older dance music. In the trailerpark, public entertainment includes acting out scenes from the Sopranos and old porno films and an acoustic rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

However, despite the seeming tone of open-minded exploration, what comes through eventually is a vision of a future that rejects our present to embrace our past. A Christian fundamentalism runs through the moderate Union Grove townspeople as much as it does the Revelation-quoting New Faith congregation (aside from those like Wayne Karp’s followers or the new mayor of Albany who prefer the rape-and-pillage alternative). Benevolent patriarchy is painted as ideal. Women are either housewives or whores (or, in the case of the New Faith bunch, essentially both) and while sometimes tough, they’re never self-sufficient. Significantly, no one seems to challenge this status quo; there is seemingly not a woman alive who would rather hunt or work wood than tend a kitchen garden and grind cornmeal. (The book talks a lot about “samp”; what’s wrong with “grits?” I ask.) There’s not a person of color, although it’s implied the bandits or “pickers” who rove the country may be non-white. Toward the end of the book, Robert Earle does reflect that, yes, two black men did use to live in the area, but they were killed off by the various disasters so that community didn’t have to actually make a place for them.

There’s the implication, not really explored or explained, that Brother Jobe may have messianic powers, and there’s a problematic scene where Robert Earle is taken to visit New Faith’s obese, drooling seeress. The ending leaves some matters strangely unfinished, while glossing over Robert Earle’s thinking in confronting the trailerpark crew unarmed and wallowing excessively in the results. Overall, however, despite several issues that ruffled my feathers, World Made by Hand tackles a lot worth thinking about – how we find meaning, what makes a community, how we would survive without the technologies and connections we typically take for granted, and whether our current way of life is setting us up for a fall.

Sadly, The Witch of Hebron, the second World Made By Hand novel, plummetts head-first into every pit its predecessor merely skirted. Apparently, the postapocalyptic future will be obsessed with dick. The book opens with two boys fishing on a beautiful October day, then spying on the local hermit jerking off. Although this incident sparks some weak rumors that return later in the novel, it never really plays a signifcant role. Presumably, it’s there to highlight a theme of men (unbound by the distancing technologies and other niceties of modern-day life) finding power by fucking. And killing. But all in a kind of low-key, smalltown way.

The coming of age story of eleven-year-old Jasper, the son of Union Grove’s doctor, is the novel’s most coherent through-line. Running away from home, confronting a crazy outlaw, killing a man, and saving a man’s life are all part of his journey, but of course it just wouldn’t be complete without a night of sex with a thirteen-year-old hooker. Jasper is an interesting character, especially in the beginning when he makes his decision to abandon Union Grove and sets out on his own, before he meets up with bandit Billy Bones.

Other plotlines include relatively incompetent but violent Billy Bones beating to death a lot of characters who should have known better, “plantation” owner Stephen Bullock slicing off the heads of more outlaws (who of course burst all the way into his bedroom and disrespect his wife before meeting any resistance from Bullock or his “employees”) and hanging the rest of the bunch from trees along the public thoroughfare, town preacher Loren getting over his persistent impotence by sleeping with high-class prostitute/witch Barbara Maglie, and Bullock ordering Dr. Copeland to dig up Shawn Watling’s grave and perform an inquest. This last seems egregiously out of place in this novel, where it’s given little attention and doesn’t fit with the other threads: while it continues the concerns of the prequel, apparently to provide an ominous set-up for a third book, the lack of explanation for the time gap and the lack of follow up make this simply an aimless, under-developed interlude. I confess to being a little curious as to whether Robert Earle will be blamed for the murder (in short, what will come of the inciting incident of World Made by Hand), but I don’t think I’m curious enough to try a third Made by Hand book, assuming one’s out yet. Nor does it really seem plausible that Robert hasn’t married Watling’s widow by now, or at least thought about it or talked it over with Loren. While Loren remains a likable guy, the transparent taking-charge-by-becoming-a-patriarch arc (after getting his mojo back following his night with Barbara, he rescues four orphan boys who were going to be sold for “labor or sport” in a nearby township) doesn’t appeal.

The question of whether the supernatural truly exists in this world (Is Barbara Maglie a witch or just skilled with herbs and setting the mood? Is Brother Jobe really superhuman or does he just know a little hypnotism?) could be interesting but is rendered much less so by Kunstler’s clear answer that yes, there really is magic in the world (for example, the grotesque Precious Mother of the New Faith cult seems to able not just to predict the future but to read the past and present as well and as plot-convenient) and the failure of any of the characters to do much more with or about it than rock back on their heels and mutter “I’ll be.” Not even to mention the hermit’s mountain cat visions. Because those seemed so plausible.

***

Maybe we should have glidered in, thinks Edward Blair, before skillfully romancing an employee of the John Hancock Center skyscraper, snagging her set of keys, and breaking into the enemy’s plush headquarters suite. A hallway shootout. A rooftop shootout. The first chapter of The Lives of Tao is like the opening sequence from a Bond movie, and Edward Blair is who Bond would be if he shared his body with an ancient, intelligent alien that has had a hand in shaping human history from Cro Magnon times.

All does not end well for Edward. By Chapter 2, Tao must find a new host, and (with few choices) he lands in the body of Roen Tan, an overweight IT technician much the worse for wear after a night on the town. Soon, Roen is hearing a voice in his head, giving dating advice, helping out on the job, and explaining that Roen is now the host for Tao, Prophus agent and former symbiote of Genghis Khan, Ming Emperor Hongwu, and General Lafayette. The Genjix and Prophus hold differing views on whether conflict spurs human development; ironically, this puts them in conflict. Roen has essentially been conscripted to the secret service, given mere months to get in shape and misson-ready, lest Tao be forcibly “extracted,” a process that will be fatal for Roen. In addition to the fun spy-training scenes (Tao has invented several martial arts over the millennia, so it seems only fitting that Roen should learn the Grand Supreme Fist), some attention is given to questions of free will versus coercion, pacifism versus armed struggle, and ends and means. Also, will Roen ever be able to keep a girlfriend? The working answers to these questions may be found a little too simply, but it’s the spy story that keeps the pages turning as Roen accepts his destiny and the “partners” work to foil Genjix’s Penetra program.

Oh, the submarine? It’s in there, the better to convey the Prophus agents to the Genjix’s former-WWII mountainside bunker headquarters. I wouldn’t want to spoil anything by telling you how the big fight on the helipad turns out.

So far, a few pages into the sequel, I’m delighted by the suggestion that it has two protagonists & that we seem to be dropped, several years later, into an interesting point in their relationship. It may yet degenerate into cliché, but perhaps not; I’m along for the ride …

Exploring the Fantastical Wild West

I quite enjoyed Native Star, a Christmas gift off my Amazon wishlist from Noah, plus it got my 2014 SFF Explorer Challenge off to an early start, since I hadn’t read anything by M.K. Hobson. It’s a mostly-light historical fantasy with a heavy (predictable but enjoyable) dose of Pride and Prejudice. Emily Edwards, witch from the small Sierra Neveda town Lost Pine, must journey to San Francisco (and then farther) with East Coast-educated warlock Dreadnought Stanton. There are some of the expected tropes of the historical fantasy and Western genres: the savages are noble, the Russians are mysterious, the raccoons are mutants, and the miners are undead. Well, maybe not all of those tropes are so expected. One of the most satisfying aspects of the storytelling is that the characters stay true to their own personalities and agendas throughout; I never felt a character was simply caving to the dictates of the plot, and while the ending was a bit rushed, Hobson set up many intriguing possibilities and a few surprises. Emily remained a true and worthy protagonist to the end.

There are many enjoyable intricacies to this world, from mail-order patent charms to the hybrid Cockatrice flying machine. There are tensions between science and magic, various schools of magic (the sangrimancers traffic in blood magics while for the credomancers, belief is everything), and the ill-regarded witches. While filling in some details, the follow-up, The Hidden Goddess, was not quite as polished. Emily seemed to drift from place to place and encounter to encounter, seldom taking the lead and even more rarely interacting with Dreadnought. The pressure of living up to the uppercrust Stantons is a central dilemma, but neither Emily nor Dreadnought’s family seem to change much or have any noteworthy reactions to each other; they simply cohabitate when the

circumstances dictate. While there’s a clear and very bad Big Bad, it doesn’t seem to much affect the goings-on in New York until the hurried ending, which seemed as if it would have taken place in much the same way at the novel’s beginning (without any of the intervening events) as it does at the end. The cleverest element of the book is the character and story of Miss Jesczenka, who explores the themes of gender relationships and the morals of public relations much more thoroughly in this volume than does Emily.

It seems that Hobson’s third book, set in 1911 and dealing with the offspring of characters from The Native Star, is less well reviewed than the two I’ve read. Still, there’s enough detail and possibility in the world Hobson creates and the way it intersects with “real” history that I’m interested in reading more. I’ll probably wait until Book 4 comes out, however, as it looks like Hobson has a tendency to write in pairs (mabye it’s in her contract).

***

Bloodshot and Hellbent by Cherie Priest are also partially set in the West; vampire and thief Raylene Pendle is based in Seattle when she’s contracted by a fellow member of the undead to steal the records of the secret government experiments of which he was a victim. The books are pretty generic first-person urban fantasy with more than a dash of paranormal romance. I found Raylene’s overly chummy narration tended to get annoying (Have I mentioned I over-pack my purse when I prepare to break into a government facility? You remember what happened with my last adventure, right?) and I could wish for a bit more obvious skill in my protagonist (übercompetence may be a cliché, but so is cluelessness).

Though both books spend significant time on the West Coast, they also range afield, with much of Bloodshot’s action taking place in Atlanta and D.C. and a central Hellbent encounter involving the infiltration of a Houston NASA compound. In fact, one of the highlights of the series hails from Atlanta, Adrian deJesus, an ex-Navy SEAL drag queen whose vampire sister was a victim of both the government experiments and Atlanta’s own ruthless vampire nest.

These were like-‘em-not-love-‘em fare for me, but they did keep the pages turning. While I won’t necessarilly be looking for the chronicles of Raylene’s future adventures, I am still interested in Priest’s series of steampunkish alternate-history Westerns, for which she’s best known.

***

Oh, and sometime I should do a post about two writers who didn’t quite make the Explorer cut – Charles Stross (whom I can’t count as new-to-me because I read Revenge of the Nerds, which he co-authored with Cory Doctorow, last year) and Ruth Ozeki (whose For The Time Being I just can’t consider either sci-fi or fantasy). But I’ll save that for another night.

2014 Book Challenges

So, what’s the plan for 2014? Maybe update this blog more than once every twelve months …

Actually, I have set a couple of reading challenges for the year & hope to write up a bit about those as time goes on. The first is the “SFF Explorer” challenge, set by one of the groups I joined on the Goodreads website, the Science Fiction and Heroic Fantasy group, with the goal of reading works by science and fiction and fantasy authors I haven’t read before. I set a goal of 20 new authors for the year. (I thought that would be amibitious, and prompt me to look into sub-genres like military sci-fi that I don’t read as much of, and both of those may yet prove to be the case, but so far this challenge has mainly prompted me to pick up several I’ve-been-meaning-to-get-around to titles off my own shelves and the library shelves. Hmm, with Wesley Chu I’m already up to at least 4.6666 out of 20.)

The second is a poetry challenge, because I can tend to put off reading volumes after I’ve bought them, at least cover-to-cover. They do take time and attention; you need to be in a certain mood, and sometimes they can be a little heavy. But I set myself a 25-in-2013 challengen that cleared out a little of my backlog and turned me on to some interesting new stuff (much of it slam-influenced and published by Write Bloody Publishing). Highlights included Gardening in the Dark by Laura Kasischke and Brass Girl Brouhaha by Adrian Blevins, who turns out to be from Abingdon & a Hollins alumna. Still, 25 felt like a lot, so this year I set the less amibitious but more poetic 14-in-2014 challenge. To make it more of a challenge and to keep up on recent works, I’ve decided to try to read at least one volume of poetry published in each year of the 21st Century –- which means, if I include both 2000 and this year, it’ll actually be 15-in-2014. We’ll see. And that doesn’t mean I won’t throw in a few extras, or some titles from the ol’ 20th C. (A little Richard Wright perhaps? Although I usually only “count” poetry books when I’ve read them cover-to-cover, and sometimes with collections, I just feel like grazing, which might be particularly appropriate for haiku.) Or even earlier. I haven’t read anything toward this challenge yet, but I should be checking off a year or two soon, because Major Jackson is giving a reading at VCU in a few weeks, and I’ve got two recent books of his on my list.

Well, hopefully more to come …

Sharps

Sharps by K.J. Parker was an entirely pleasant surprise. Parker's an author whom I haven't heard much about and had seen in actual bookstores only very occasionally, but who came up regularly in my Amazon recommendations. I finally gave in and ordered a trilogy and a stand-alone (Sharps), all fencing-themed, but when they arrived, they sat on my shelf for months. Partly that's because the blurbs and the covers gave the general impression that this was fantasy in the "grimdark" tradition (I think of Joe Abercrombie here; many put George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice & Fire solidly in this camp as well), and while high-stakes, unsentimental, violence-filled adventure stories can be enjoyable they can also be, well, pretty grim.

What's so refreshing about Sharps is that it feels fresh, modern, and Bismarckian in its sense of realpolitik without dwelling on the sordid details of the grim and ghastly. That's not to say that nothing grisly happens, but rather that the focus is on figuring out the strategies, the politics, character motivations and histories and the probable consequences of their interactions – in short, the story. There's a certain cynicism, especially as applied to the tropes of traditional epic fantasy that's characteristic of grimdark; Parker is able to use this edge without making her* characters unsympathetic. Parker's characters are sometimes puzzles to solve, but we care about them as people, too (although we may not invest the same unguarded emotions as we might in, say, St. Vier or Alec in Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, a classic among fencing fantasies; Kushner and Parker take very different approaches to their subjects, but both are impressive).

There's a touch of twentieth century "Great Game" politics and more than a touch of Roman Empire about Sharps, with its two oft-warring kingdoms, Scheria and Permia, set in the middle of two global powers, the Western and Eastern Empires. There's a preponderance in fantasy settings of societies that have been peacefully going about the status quo for years, up until the sudden threats that prompt book-worthy events, and Parker avoids this trap by depicting nations that have been changing and evolving in recent years as well as the distant past (and, in her ending, even gives a hint of continued natural turbulence in the future). While nobles and Church play significant roles, the Bank with its loans and futures speculations is an even more important player, and it's satisfying to see large-scale financial concerns significantly motivating the novel's intrigues.

Although the scope of the story is small – a reluctantly-recruited troup of Scherian fencers embark on a "goodwill tour" of neighboring Permia – the stakes are epic-worthy, as war and peace hang in the balance. The combination results in an excellent, stand-alone novel that's fully as thought out and satisfying as a longer series of books (more satisfying, in fact, than many a trilogy).

While there are section breaks as we shift from following one character to another, Parker tells her story in one thick rush of text; at first I longed for chapter divisions, but by about a third of the way through I was fully caught up in the current. Even early on, some juxtapositions of points-of-view were startlingly bold, as we skip from playboy minor nobleman Giraut's perspective after killing a Senator in a misunderstanding to late-middle-aged Phrantzes' awkward invitation to his business partner for a dinner prepared by Phrantzes' prospective bride, a former prostitute, to the partner's verdict ("a sound medium-to-long-term investment, offering worthwhile returns with an acceptably low risk factor"). Adding to the cast is Iseutz, small-sword specialist and the lone female main character, whose point of view anchors the novel's opening and close. There's consistently colorful Suidas Deutzel, war veteran and rapier champion. There's Addo, Adolescentulus Carnufex, the fourth son of a famously ruthless general, who fades to near invisibility in company but makes an effort to prove himself over the course of the tour. And there's political officer Tzimisces, who collects Cerian porcelain.

To say much more would be a disservice to those who haven't read Sharps yet. I highly recommend it. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to looking into Parker's other work (although, I think I'll let Sharps resonate a bit before I jump into her fencing trilogy; perhaps I'll try out the engineer or scavenger trilogies, or another stand-alone).

*Parker is a pseudonymn, so I’m making guess on the pronouns here.

6 from McIntyre's

So, I thought I'd get this blog started back up by talking about six pretty different books I picked up at an independent bookseller outside of Pittsboro the first summer I visited Kate in her new diggs (they were still new at the time, anyway). I enjoyed all of them in different ways, and most of them were books I wouldn't have sought out on my own at a Barnes & Noble or Amazon (at least not without a couple of recommendations). I'll talk about them in the order I read them.

Heading Out to Wonderful is probably the furthest from my usual fare. The (beautiful) cover of this edition gives almost a chick lit feel, and it's clear early-on that this is not a plot-driven novel. The story begins in 1948, when a stranger drives into town, "Brownsburg, Virginia  ... the kind of town that existed in the years right after the war, where the terrible American wanting hadn't touched yet, where most people lived a simple life without yearning for things they couldn't have, where the general store had tin Merita bread signs as door handles ..." bringing a briefcase full of cash, a cardboard suitcase, and a set of butcher's knives.  There were times, especially in the beginning, that I worried this would be a too idealistic take on rural Virginia – the opening chapter includes such assertions as "They just accepted their lot, these five hundred or so men, women, and children, black and white, the blacks knowing their place, as they said then, which meant that the whites knew their place, too, and were pretty pleased with their lot in the evolutionary parade." – but as the story unfolds, characters begin to clash, power dynamics are laid bare, and this reader stopped suspecting the narrator owned any rose-colored glasses. (Although the narrator's identity isn't spelled out until the end of the book, it's obvious to anyone paying attention to the hints dropped in the opening.)

There's a feeling of a pastorale about many of the passages. Some of the most memorable describe the newcomer, Charlie, sleeping outside by the river in his truck. ("The summer moonlight filtered through the willow branches and made shadows on his pale, gleaming back. The black, cool water sparkled as he shook out his wet hair, turned from brown to the black of the water and the starlit night. ... Then he knelt by the truck with the singing of the crickets loud in the dark and the murmur of the night moths like a fluttering in the heart, and he said his prayers, even though he knew deep down he had lost his faith somewhere along the way.") I also appreciated the insights that accompany Charlie's visits to the local churches and how their congregations respond to him. The end of the novel takes the same slow-paced, lyrical approach as some of the earlier chapters but dives into chillingly stark, distilled meditations on human nature and motivations.

***

A far future heroine named Artemis, raised on a "library planet" and coming of age among the criminals of planet Cuchulainn? You know I had to pick that one up. The first section ("Revenge") of Artemis is what you what you might get if Tarantino directed sci-fi. It opens with a magnificent, visceral prison break and expands to tell a story of assassination and revenge. It also comes with the baggage of trendy, pulpy action films – an overabundance and aestheticization of violence and its share of gratuitous sex. In the first part of the book, these are easily out-weighed by the Artemis' vibrant and powerful first-person narration, on-fire pacing, a cinematic feel, and a sense of originality.

While entertaining, the rest of the book doesn't live up to the first section. As soon as the second chapter, we're treated to a giant chunk of exposition that, if I had to guess, is a lengthy plot summary of Palmer's novel Debatable Space. (It does make me want to read the book, although part of me fears there wouldn't be much to add to the summary!) As the book goes on, the focus widens from Artemis' personal story to bring in both her family story and a larger, galactic war. Sadly, Artemis' mother (who I'm guessing stars in one of Palmer's earlier novels) steals the focus, making our vivid protagonist Artemis seem like heroine-light, and the war story pales next to Artemis' revenge saga. On the other hand, Palmer creates some fascinating aliens, even if their participation in this novel is marginal (and they sometimes appear as deii ex machina).

***

Witches on the Road Tonight is probably the favorite of my McIntyre's selections. I was surprised I hadn't heard of it, since it was published in 2011, and I tend to pay attention to news of author Sheri Holman. (I've heard her speak, and her first book, A Stolen Tongue, about the medieval "translation" of saints' relics, was marvelously strange. Her next book, The Dress Lodger, was probably her most popular, though I found it a little grim. I hadn't read her next effort, The Mammoth Cheese, because I didn't feel like I was particularly in the mood for biting, comic critique of rural Virginian politics and dairies, but reading Witches made me want to give The Cheese a try!)

After a present-day prologue, the story begins in Panther's Gap, Virginia, 1940, when two young WPA employees, sometimes-couple Tucker and Sonia, a writer and photographer working on an annotated tourist map for the Virginia Writer's Project, drive into the rural southwest. Tucker hits young Eddie Alley on a mountain road, and although the boy isn't seriously hurt, it leads Tucker and Sonia to take an unscheduled stop in the bare-bones cabin where Eddie lives with mother, Cora. Soon Tucker finds himself attracted Cora, who has a local reputation as a dangerous witch who on occasion roams the mountains in the skin of a panther; meanwhile, young Eddie is fascinated by Tucker's film projector and an early Frankenstein.

The story skips back to the present day, where an aging Eddie lives in New York, contemplating the end of his life and his somewhat-strained relationship with his adult daughter, Wallis. We see Wallis in present day as a risk-taking journalist but follow her memories into smalltown Virginia in the 1980s, where Eddie has worked for years as Captain Casket, introducing the weekend horror movies for the local television station. Now, the station faces rocky financial straits. Young Wallis is largely oblivious to this, but she notices the strains in her parents' relationship when the family takes in a homeless teenage boy who works part-time for Eddie. As Wallis tries to adjust to the changes in her family life, she ultimately finds herself haunted by an act of witchcraft and a weekend spent visiting the old family cabin in Panther's Gap.

The strength of the novel is in the insight with which Holman describes the complex character motivations and interactions. We see and understand both Sonia's attraction to Tucker and to her work; Tucker's fears and warring ideals; the conflicts between Eddie's and Wallis' passionate desires and their legacies and responsibilities. (Although Holman makes an effort to round out Eddie's wife/Wallis' mother with a brief section from her point of view, she remains the least interesting figure.) There's also real suspense, especially as the reader begins to wonder, and fear, what really happened in 1980 ... and 1940. Meanwhile, Holman treats her magic with both seriousness and mystery, taking an approach that's not quite magic realism. Saturated in the details of the personal, Holman nevertheless touches on big ideas as her themes echo through the generations: art and family, death and mystery, life and love.

***

City of Bohane begs to be read aloud in a thick Irish accent. Of course, I couldn't produce a satisfactory accent and had to be content with imagining one. In one way, then, the novel can be slow going, since it can't be read any faster than the speaking rate of my imaginary inner Irish storyteller. But why would you want to rush? The earthy, exuberant, self-aware storyteller's prose is the heart of the book. An example from an early chapter: "Smoketown laid out its grogshops, its noodle joints, its tickle-foot parlors. Its dank shebeens and fetish studios. Its shooting galleries, hoor stables, bookmakers. All crowded in on each other in the lean-to streets. The tottering old chimneys were stacked in great deranged happiness against the morning sky. The streets in dawn light thronged with familiar faces. The Gant felt at once as if he had never been gone." Above all, City of Bohane has style.

The tale is one of gang rivalries in Bohane, an invented (yet mythically vibrant) west coast Irish city on the edge of the Big Nothin'. Logan Hartnett (with some assistance from his mother Girly, his lieutenants Wolfie Stanners and Fucker Burke, Fucker's Alsatian Angelina, and Jennie Ching the hoor) has dominated the city and the enterprising young thugs of the Hartnett Fancy for years when the Gant rides into town and upsets the balance of things. The darkly comic tone is reminiscent of the Galway-set film The Guard with Brendan Gleeson (but with more epic overtones). The plot takes place in a not-terribly-distant future (it's hard to figure out whether Girly grew up as a contemporary to the reader or in a somewhat earlier or later time), and while the details of exactly how much time has elapsed and what events have brought Bohane to its present state are sketchy, they don't really matter for enjoying the novel. The rivalry and the word play are what's important here, and both are to be relished.

***

The Fifth Servant is the rare medieval-set tome with the energy and pacing of a contemporary detective story. The point-of-view switches between the noir-like first person narration of Benyamin Ben-Akiva, a poor scholar new to town and filling the humble role of fifth shammas for the Jewish community, and various third person interludes (when, for example, we need to find out what the Christian serving girl or the corrupt clergy are getting up to). The narration is notable for both using contemporary slang without calling undue attention to it and being deeply immersed in the details of Jewish religious life and practice – sometimes proverbs, but mostly exceprts from Talmudic stories and interpretations of law. (“The Talmud asks, ‘Why are scholars compared to a nut?’ The answer given is that even though the outside may be dirty and scuffed, the inside is still valuable. But I could think of other reasons for the comparison.”) The story kicks off with a murder that must be solved before Passover. Ben-Akiva finds himself the go-between between the Jewish and Christian communities (as well as the more literal Talmud scholars and rabbis and those who follow the mystical bent of Rabbi Loew), hindered by religious strictures, threats of violence from the Christian community, and the Jews’ position, not as citizens but as property, of the Hapsburg Emperor (who makes an appearance).

This novel set in sixteenth-century Prague makes an interesting companion piece with the historical sections of Everything Is Illuminated. I suspect the characterizations of the rabbis and the plotlines surrounding Rabbi Loew would be even richer for a reader better versed in Jewish history, but even this amateur found a lot to appreciate. (And between the Foer and Wishnia, I found myself delving into the very interesting Learning to Read Midrash, with scholarly but entertaining explanations of stories – intriguingly found in both Midrash and the Qu’ran but not in the Bible/Torah – and exegesis of Biblical word choices and seeming contradictions. I also checked out Swimming in the Sea of Talmud and Searching for Meaning from Midrash, mentioned in The Fifth Servant’s useful acknowledgments, but didn’t get far: these much drier tomes, while chunked into shorter sections, focus more on interpreting duties and regulations and are less friendly to a reader unfamiliar with Jewish law.)

***

Alif the Unseen calls to mind the work of Ursula K. LeGuin. The characters may not be quite as well rounded or the deeper layers as philosphical as Earthsea’s, but Alif shares the ambience of quick-moving fairytale with a serious side. Whether it’s due to the upper-class girl he’s secretly been seeing, the illegal security and encryption services he provides his online customers, or the rare book that has suddenly fallen into his hands, Indian-Arab hacker Alif knows he’s in trouble when he finds the national security services surrounding his house. 

Fortunately, the cat that sometimes sneeks onto his balcony turns out to be a jinn (one of several, friendly and otherwise, he will encounter in his travels) and Alif finds fellow travellers in his neighbor Dina and a contact that goese by the screenname NewQuarter. There are fantastic locales, exciting episodes (like the escape from the secret desert prison), and cogent reflections on religion, politics, and ethics. While the end (written in the midst of the Arab Spring and published in 2012) reflected both the chaos and hopes of current events and incorporated a mythic hacker showdown, I did feel it left a little to be desired. Overall, however, Alif brings a bright energy and fresh setting to the fantasy and modern-day-fairytale genres.