2015 Nebula and 2016 Locus Fantasy: UPROOTED by Naomi Novik

Most of Naomi Novik's published work is an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars with dragons, the Temeraire series. I'm intrigued by the setting, though I was always a little afraid that it would pale in comparison to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Based on this book, a standalone fantasy novel, I'm a little more inclined to give Novik's other work a shot. It's a very well-written and imaginative work that often evoked the works of Hayao Miyazaki, which I consider a big compliment.

Establishing settings is one of the great challenges of science fiction and fantasy; lots of works throw the reader into an unfamiliar world in a way that can be alienating for big portions of a book, while others give you a long, unattractive expository infodump before you can settle in. Novik focuses on characters and then skillfully unveils this fantasy setting in a compelling manner; this was probably my favorite aspect of the book. Uprooted takes place in a psuedo-eastern Europe, late medievalish, and with magic. The main character Agnieszka is a young girl from a small village in the country of Polnya (psuedo-Poland bordered by a psuedo-Russia called Rosya). The village faces danger in the form of The Wood, the diabolical forest that sends out creatures to spread its magical corruption. The village is protected by a powerful wizard that the villagers know as the Dragon, who demands in repayment that a young girl come to serve him for ten year periods. Agnieszka gets taken as the Dragon's servant, but she soon finds that she has her own magical talents, which disrupts the gruff Dragon's typical brusqueness.

It's actually a fairly generic set-up for a romantic story, and, of course, there is one, but there's a lot more going on as well. And the real strength is Novik's prose, which is clean and clear but with a fairy tale flourish. Novik is especially adept at describing magic; she always gives both the spells of our heroes and the dark magics of the forest a tactile component. She makes it easy to imagine the feel of magic. And, as mentioned above, she really evokes Miyazaki's animated film Mononoke Hime (one of the great depictions of magical corruption in film) in The Wood's corruption without it ever feeling ripped off. The first half of the book also manages to capture some of the dreamy Miyazaki pacing that make his films so transporting.

I did have some problems with the book, almost all in the second half. After slowly creating a fascinating world, Novik proceeds to blow it all up. The pace picks up quickly and the book gallops to an apocalyptic conclusion. I neither expected nor wanted all of this world's mysteries and problems solved, but Novik seems intent on doing so. Not only does this strip away some of the sense of wonder, it also pushes aside character development for plot development, and the plot just isn't as interesting as the characters. In a way, though, I mean this as a compliment. I wanted to spend more time in the Dragon's Tower, and more time with Agnieszka.

Anyway, another good choice for the Nebula awards. I'm glad I'm catching up, as I missed some great stuff.

Grade: B+

2012 Hugo nominee, novel: A DANCE WITH DRAGONS by George R. R. Martin

Yes, I'm still here. This summer is gonna be rough for me, so expect sparser and shorter posts. Sorry.

Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is surely the hottest property in speculative publishing at the moment (maybe disregarding YA), especially with the conclusion of the second season of the HBO series, which has been a success critically and in the ratings. I had my doubts about the first volume, was won over by the second, and adored the third. There's a general consensus that the fourth and fifth volumes show a decline, and, well, I guess I have to agree.

I obviously read A Feast for Crows first. My quick take is that it’s not as poor as its reputation – the fact that it was years late and its sequel years later factoring large in its assessment. That said, it’s a partial story, and the characters left out (not to mention the end points for the characters left in) seem especially designed by Martin to frustrate readers. The book is fairly focused though, and, in Cersei Lannister, we get one of our clearest single-book character arcs since Ned Stark’s in book one (though, again, it lacks an ending). I’d probably give it a B+, which is a big step down from the previous two entries, but not bad at all.

A Dance with Dragons, on the other hand, I found even worse than its reputation. I think it's a clear low point in the series. The series has always been a little notorious for its tangents - character arcs never quite end up at their original goal, new elements are constantly added, and characters can get bogged down in specific locales or storylines. Some people have gone so far as to suggest that Martin is using delaying tactics because he doesn't know where the series is going. I'm not going to go that far, but that would explain a lot. 

In Dance, one major character sets out in a promising direction and then gets waylaid at least half-a-dozen times to the point that he ends up as a slave performing a variety act. A major new claimant to the Iron Throne is introduced. Yes, by God, another one! Another major character is killed off for no particular reason (though I doubt he's really dead). Several characters only get look ins or don't appear at all, and most of the plotlines left hanging in Feast land with a thud. I found this novel somewhat tedious, and it took me months to get through (I read A Storm of Swords, which is longer, in a week or so, and Feast even faster - I think because I was still riding the high of Storm).

That said, the book does still contain many of the series' virtues. The prose is strong, the dialogue clever, the characters feel real, and he world is insanely detailed. Song of Ice and Fire fans will still find plenty to like. But some forward momentum and simplification of the plot would really be welcome.

A lot of bloggers seem to think that this is the odds-on favorite to win based on the current buzz that the franchise has. I'm not sure I buy that - my gut says Embassytown is unbeatable - popular Hugo-winning author does space opera for the first time is a clear winning formula. But I can't say I'd mind horribly if this did win, even after spending a full blog post complaining about it. There's no clearly better winner, in my opinion, and I'd view an award for this novel as an award for the series, which has not yet won and really does deserve to. I wouldn't vote for this novel though.

Grade: C+

2009 Locus Fantasy – LAVINIA by Ursula K. LeGuin

This is the seventh LeGuin book I’ve covered for this blog (not counting the original Earthsea trilogy, which I also read during this project).  That sets the record, beating out Heinlein and the more recent Neal Stephenson (who easily takes the page-count award) at six.  LeGuin did a lot to push the limits of sf, and I certainly think she deserves the honor, but it’s still rather surprising that she achieved the feat with wins for two separate books published in April 2009, months before her 80th birthday.

Lavinia expands the story of a minor character from The Aeneid, the epic poem by first century Roman poet Virgil.  Well, she shouldn’t really be a minor character, as she’s the main character’s wife, she’s the reason for the central conflict of the last act, and she’s presented as the mother of the Roman nation, but Virgil only gives her a few lines.  So, LeGuin comes to her rescue. The Aeneid aped Homeric style to tell a story that linked the founding of Rome to the fall of Troy, which allowed the new Roman Empire to link itself to the dominant Hellenic tradition of the Mediterranean while also claiming a moral superiority over the Greeks.  It’s a foundational text of western literature – remember, it’s Virgil, not Homer, that guides Dante through Hell – but it doesn’t seem to be as widely read or referenced in the last couple of decades.  I read it as a freshman in college.  I can’t say I absorbed it all, but having a passing familiarity with the text probably helped my enjoyment of this novel.

The final sections of the epic recount the arrival of a group of Trojan refugees, led by Aeneas, to Italy.  They immediately fall into conflict with the local Latin tribes, especially after Aeneas tries to wed a Latin princess named Lavinia, in accordance with various prophecies.  LeGuin gives us Lavinia’s perspective with a first-person narration that begins in her youth.  She has a loving father, and a crazy mother, and she’s not too keen on the local Latin suitors.  She believes her destiny is to marry a foreigner, but her mother and finest suitor start a war with the Trojans to keep her. The novel continues beyond Virgil’s poem to describe Lavinia’s loving marriage to Aeneas and her efforts to raise their son to be a fine king of the Latins.

There’s not much of the fantastic here.  Actually, the novel is more grounded in archaeology and actual history than The Aeneid, with its glittering kingdoms and divine interventions.  LeGuin’s Thirteenth-century B.C. Italy is poor and pastoral, and she works to keep the religious practices and ethnographic details fairly accurate (though she does admit to some artistic license in the afterword).  The main elements come through prophesy-infused narrative devices, including appearances by Virgil’s ghost (hey, if he can lead Dante through Hell, he can have a chat with one of his characters), and a lavishly described bas-relief shield that somehow depicts most of the major events of the Roman history to come. LeGuin manages to keep the story grounded, but give it these hints of magic.

The real attraction, as is usually the case with LeGuin, is not the speculative elements or the plot, but prose and character. If you’ve ever read Virgil or Homer, you know the heroes are larger-than-life, but LeGuin makes them feel real, and Lavinia is a wonderful heroine. The world-building is especially spectacular. LeGuin brings a very foreign place and time to life.

My one disappointment is that LeGuin seems to have lost interest in the complex analysis of gender that characterized her early work.  Since Tehanu, she seems to spend more time focusing on essential differences of sex…though maybe it just feels that way because most of her recent works have been set in explicitly sexist fantasy worlds. In this novel, men are quite literally from Mars (the god); they stupidly fight and ignore women. Lavinia’s mother, meanwhile, is quite the shrew.

Still, this is the best LeGuin novel I’ve read since at least The Dispossessed…maybe since The Lathe of Heaven.  Powers was nice, but I think the Nebulas would’ve been better served with this as their choice.

Grade: B+

2006 Locus Fantasy and BFS - ANANSI BOYS by Neil Gaiman

Oh man, is this blog still going? If you're still out there, we're in the home stretch folks.


Anansi Boys was actually withdrawn from Hugo competition by the author.  Based on the nominations it received, it might have given Spin a run for its money, and Gaiman might have racked up another novel Hugo.  It's nice of him to share the wealth, and, considering that this is a much lighter read than American Gods (and that Gaiman had another novel Hugo coming before the end of the decade), it was probably for the best.

In fact, Anansi Boys almost feels like a discarded subplot from American Gods; it shares a character in Mr. Nancy, who is actually the African trickster spider-god Anansi.  At the beginning of the novel, Anansi dies, and his son, Londoner "Fat Charlie" Nancy goes to the funeral.  As a result, he meets his brother, the current incarnation of Spider, and (remember, this is a Neil Gaiman novel) gets drawn into a mythical world of gods and mischief.

Gaiman goes for a much lighter mood in this novel than many of his others (outside of Good Omens), and it almost had the feel of Tom Robbins or Douglas Adams...without the virtues of their best novels.  In fact, this novel was a little *too* lightly comic.  Tricksters walk a fine line between clever and annoying, and Spider ends up on the wrong side of the line quite a bit.  So, not my favorite Gaiman book, though still fun.

Grade: B-

2005 Arthur C. Clarke and Locus Fantasy – IRON COUNCIL by China Miéville

I’m going to warn readers in advance that this review might dance the edge of spoilers. I’m not going to say much that you can’t get from reading the front and back cover, but Mieville writes this novel as if everything is a giant mystery.  The entire first part involves a group of characters searching for a mysterious someone.  Who is it?  Mieville won’t say!  It’s mysterious.  And then, you finally discover that it’s…Judah Low, a new character.  There’s a similar tease and reveal with the “Iron Council.” I think these sorts of mysteries for mystery’s sake are good examples of what’s annoyed me about Mieville’s earlier works.  That said, as a whole, I liked this novel much better than the two previous novels set on the Weird world of Bas-Lag.

As I said, a group of adventurers from New Crobuzon are off in the wilderness looking for Judah Low. Among them is Judah’s lover Cutter, who exhibits some of the greatest character depth I’ve seen from Mieville so far. There’s not much more to him than his obsession with Judah, but Mieville handles that with a defter touch than I’ve seen in the previous works.  Judah, in turn, is looking for the Iron Council, a revolutionary collective of former rail workers who stole the entire railroad (it’s sort of a stretch, but a fun one, and this is Bas-Lag we’re talking about). Judah can create magical golems, and he was one of the heroes of the revolution that created the Iron Council, which is narrated in the novel’s driving, exciting centerpiece. Judah left the Iron Council to connect with protest movements in New Crobuzon, but he now wants to return. Meanwhile, we also get the story of a brewing revolution in the city itself that parallels some of the history of the Paris Commune. We follow one of the revolutionaries named Ori, who has to navigate some conflicting motives from some of the movements’ leaders. Disenchanted with an ongoing war with the Tesh, and sick of the city government’s brutal oppression, the people rise up, and look to the fabled Iron Council’s return as their best hope of victory.

This is the first time that the story of a Bas-Lag novel felt big enough to match the majesty of the setting and epic enough to befit the significant page-length. Mieville is no longer dancing around the themes he cares about with obfuscated mutant bug metaphors; he’s a Marxist, and this book is about revolution.  It can be heavy-handed at times, and I’m not sure I’d agree with all of Mieville’s politics, but it really does feel like THE story he’s been trying to tell. The word “history” echoes through the book, replete with all of the teleological connotations of Mieville’s beliefs – is it the inexorable expansion of industrial capitalism, represented by the octopus-like tentacles of rail, or is it the march to a workers’ utopia? Mieville uses these question as a backdrop that, most importantly, heightens the character drama, something that I felt was missing from The Scar and Perdido Street Station.

That’s not to say that this novel solves all of the problems of its predecessors.  I’m not positive that Cutter and Jonah and their laconic love story, are that much richer than Bellis or Isaac.  Maybe they just felt that way to me because I enjoyed the plot more. And, I did not connect to Ori, who did feel as passive and immaterial as the characters of the earlier books. The worst offender is Drogon, a susurrating vaquero.  He has magical powers based on whispers, which is pretty cool, and his ranch-hand get-up adds to the vaguely western feel of portions of the book, but he doesn’t contribute much else.  He arrives, makes a big splash with his power and aesthetic, and then disappears until he has a role to play at the end. It seems that Mieville has to force every bit of weirdness into Bas-Lag that he can; no need to develop the ideas into a coherent world/plot/character.  I’m starting to suspect that I preferred The City & The City because the clarity and focus of the central concept forced Mieville to develop things a bit more, and maybe the same can be said about this book as well. The Revolution at the book’s core gives it a stronger structure and message than the bug hunt of Perdido Street Station or the vague unfinished quest of The Scar.  I’m certainly not one to complain about a new twist on fantasy, but I have to declare Bas-Lag a slight disappointment.  There’s a lot of new, but still not as much of the depth I’m looking for in fantasy world-building.

Grade: B+

2004 Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Fantasy – PALADIN OF SOULS by Lois McMaster Bujold

Bujold wins her fourth Hugo in fourteen years (only Heinlein has exceeded this feat), and her second Nebula with this fantasy novel.  I tend to have nigh-impossible standards for High Fantasy (it took awhile for Song of Ice and Fire to win me over, after all)…but I liked this book, and its predecessor, 2001’s Curse of Chalion.  Bujold doesn’t exactly overcome the problems I’ve come to have with most high fantasy novels.  She still focuses on Byzantine political conflicts, leaving the central social issues of her faux-medieval society unexamined, and her prose is still stilted.  But she sidesteps these issues with a more personal focus on a smaller cast and setting, and with the general charm that all of her books seem to exude.

These books introduce the small nation of Chalion, which I imagined along the lines of medieval Spain, I think because of the consonants she uses in names and the many political similarities.  In this world, people believe in a nuclear family of gods – the Father, Mother, Daughter, and Son.  Some people, including most of Chalion, also worship “the Bastard” as a fifth god of social deviance and magic, while Chalion’s enemies see the Bastard as a demonic force outside of the pantheon.  The Curse of Chalion follows former general, and former slave Lupe dy Cazilar as he dabbles in death magic to redeem himself and Chalion’s royal family, who are literally cursed by dark magic, and figuratively cursed with corrupt officials.  I actually liked Curse a bit more than this novel; the plot seemed more focused and the characters more interesting.  It was also nominated for a Hugo, but lost in a much tougher field (that included American Gods, Passage, and Perdido Street Station).

Paladin follows a minor character from the first book, the former queen Ista.  Ista had been inflicted with the curse, and had communicated with the gods.  She also did some rather horrible things to try to remove the curse, and most people considered her mad in her grief.  Now, she’s trying to regain some freedom by going on a pilgrimage, but on her way, she encounters an epidemic of demonic possession and raids from Chalion’s enemies, the Roknari.  She comes to a castle that has its own share of curses and conflicts, and she has to deal with new powers from the gods.

Bujold plays some interesting games with magic and religion here, and it is a well-told story with compelling characters, which I’ve come to expect from her.  We do get a few of the plot contrivances that bothered me in the Vorkosigan series, but they make a lot more sense when divine intervention is in play. I still want more out of fantasy novels than this, but there’s no question that this is a very solid entry in the canon.  The phrase “guilty pleasure” seems unfair to Bujold, because she does offer more depth and better writing than most sf, and yet her novels do bring that phrase to mind, because they are so enjoyable, and so focused on simply telling a clear, entertaining story.

I should note that David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas was nominated for a Nebula this year.  It’s one of my favorite novels, so I’m kind of bummed that the SFWA panel didn’t go out on a limb and give it the award.  The Hugo nominee line-up is quite a bit weaker, and, though I've only read one other nominee, I imagine that Bujold would've been my choice.

Grade: B

(I’d give Curse of Chalion a B+)

2003 BFS and Locus Fantasy – THE SCAR by China Miéville

Bas-Lag round 2.  As in Perdido Street Station, I really want to love Mieville’s merging of different oddball concepts and his working to look at fantasy at new angles, and again, I didn’t feel like the novel delivered on the potential of Mieville’s world.

The Scar begins with a new character, Bellis Coldwine fleeing the city of New Crobuzon (due to the events of Perdido Street Station – I guess that’s a spoiler, but the eventual revelation is more fan service than plot service).  She joins an oceanic voyage to a distant colony, but her ship is overtaken, and she winds up in the floating pirate city of Armada instead.  She and her fellow travelers are impressed into serving in Armada, and she begins to build relationships with them.  She teaches cabin boy Shekel how to read, she learns of scholar Johannes Tearfly’s new research agenda, and she befriends a Remade prisoner from the ship named Tanner Sack.  A spy from New Crobuzon named Silas Fennec warns her that her home city might be in danger, but she also learns more about the leaders of Armada, including a scarred pair called the Lovers, a mercernary with a mystic sword named Uther Doul, and a shifty vampire called The Brucolac.

It kind of feels like I just listed characters there rather than describing the plot, but there’s not a whole lot of plot.  The leaders of the Armada do have an elaborate plan that involves some mystical exploration, but I don’t want to spoil it.  Most of the novel is just Bellis sitting around, pondering her allegiances or speculating on the Armada with her friends. It all feels a bit aimless.  In some ways, this novel has the opposite problem of Perdido Street Station’s transition to lengthy, single-minded bug hunt.  That novel became too focused, The Scar never quite gets focused enough.

I think the common denominator might be the characters.  Isaac der Grinebulin bounced between opportunistic bastard, bohemian romantic, absent-minded professor, and action hero without really developing a distinctive voice, other than a very funny foul mouth.  Bellis doesn’t even have the foul mouth going for her.  There’s a nice bit about her writing letters to an undetermined audience, but otherwise, she’s a very passive protagonist.  I suppose that’s her character arc, but since we spend most of the novel's 575 pages with her, she should at least be interesting.

There is plenty to like here.  Armada is another fun creation (though I wish it had done more), as are some of the magic monsters, items, and phenomena in the book (the “might sword” is one of the coolest ideas I've seen in fantasy in a long time).  The themes are more cohesive than Perdido, too. Every significant character ends up with mental and/or physical scars that nicely echo the mysterious Scar of the title, but Mieville keeps it from getting too heavy handed.  And there are nice allusions to the likes of Moby Dick (Melville, Mieville?). His prose is, well, a bit more restrained, which I think is mostly for the best (this novel is “wobbling testicle” free).

It’s the many strengths of The Scar and Perdido Street Station that make me so frustrated that I haven’t really connected with either. I’m still going to come back for The Iron Council.

Grade: B-

2002 Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Fantasy - AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman made his name writing the Sandman series for Vertigo comics through most of the '90s. That series followed the adventures of Morpheus, the god of dreams, and wove together a wide variety of myths and legends to create a really fascinating setting for some innovative-yet-archetypal storytelling. Gaiman continued along the same lines with his novels, and he really broke through with this, his fifth, which dominated the major sf awards (and helped start the trend of fantasy's dominance in the '00s).

Gaiman usually comes off as the quintessential Brit in his writing, but he moved to the US (actually to my current neck of the woods) before this novel. Perhaps as a result, American Gods actually feels a lot like good Stephen King to me. Gaiman's works are usually about normal people thrust into magical worlds and given a destiny (In King's works, the people are a bit more blue collar, and they're less likely to get a destiny and more likely just to be trying to survive). In American Gods, the central character is a Minnesotan named Shadow, who begins the novel in prison. His wife dies, leading to a slightly early release, and Shadow ends up employed as the bodyguard of a strange man named Wednesday. From Wednesday, Shadow learns that gods are real, but they are created by human beliefs - America is overcrowded with gods because of its immigrant past, and the gods from the Norse, Greek, Hindu, and Egyptian pantheons (among others) must compete with modern technology for their survival. Shadow has all sorts of surreal encounters with these beings (both friend and foe) and most of them are extremely interesting. There are also a few very nice twists along the way (the best twists are the sort that make you exclaim "of course!" but that you still never see coming - the identity of the central villain here fits that description perfectly).

Gaiman does dodge Christianity for the most part, which seems odd considering the book's conceit and the nature of faith in the United States. I don't particularly blame him for dodging that can of worms, but it could have added another layer to the novel.

So, it's a fun novel, and just enough of a departure from his previous work to explain (and, I'd say, to warrant) his sudden wide recognition and mainstream success. Neverwhere is my personal favorite, but I'd still recommend American Gods first, especially to a fellow American. Great stuff, and a worthy winner from the fantasy side of the tracks.

Grade: A-

2001 Locus Fantasy – A STORM OF SWORDS by George R. R. Martin

I found A Game of Thrones somewhat disappointing. A Clash of Kings gave me much more confidence in Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, but I still struggled, slightly, with some aspects. This third volume (of a series originally intended to be a trilogy…) is damn near perfect, as far as I’m concerned.

Again, there’s not much I can say about the plot without spoilers for the first two novels, and this certainly shouldn’t be read without those. The continent of Westeros is ripped apart by political strife between several of its most powerful families. Meanwhile, supernatural threats gather in the frozen north and across the Narrow Sea. I’m not even going to get into specific characters, because this is a series where anyone can die, and just knowing who survived the first two books would be a little too revealing.

Martin was already a mature and accomplished writer (especially of short fiction) before he began this series in 1996, but I feel that his prose has matured significantly since A Game of Thrones. His dialogue is memorable, the characters are complex and fascinating (this volume is famous for making one of the most hated characters of the first novel into a fan favorite), and surprises abound. The world-building is amazing, and Martin clearly has a detailed history for this world and a thorough understanding of how its politics and economics work. The supernatural elements are especially fascinating, as magic is rare but immensely powerful.

My one complaint (I always have at least one) is that some of the characters' movements seem a little random. One character in particular has been bouncing back and forth through the middle of Westeros for nearly two-thousand pages. There have been some good sub-plots along the way for her, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a clear aim or purpose for her character.

This is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read, and I’ve really come to love this series. I know that it gets more frustrating from here, with the waiting and the awkwardly split novels. There’s no way I can’t keep going after this entry though.

Grade: A

2000 Locus Fantasy – HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN by J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter is a multi-billion dollar phenomenon. It has probably made more money and penetrated into the popular consciousness more than anything else I’ll talk about on this blog with the possible exception of Star Wars. I think the real turning point of the phenomenon, the moment that it truly broke the bonds of the fantasy genre and the juvenile audience was right around 2000, when Goblet of Fire came out and the first film went into production. At least, that’s when I first heard about it, and it’s about the time that the awards I’m covering took notice.

The novels follow an orphaned and neglected boy named Harry Potter as he turns eleven and discovers that a) magic exists, b) he can do magic, c) he’s expected to attend a school for wizards, and d) he has a destiny as the unwitting defeater of the evil Lord Voldemort. It’s a perfect wish-fulfillment scenario, but it also allows Rowling to play with some of the tropes of urban fantasy, an area where I think the films have focused more. In the novels, it’s almost suburban fantasy, as the real world (or “muggle,” in Rowling’s parlance) contrast is the suburban, dull, and downright abusive Dursley family.

Each of the seven novels in the series focuses on one year of Harry’s school at the wizard school Hogwarts. I think this might be Rowling’s most brilliant conceit, as it gives her a sold formula to follow or subvert as needed, and it allows the series to grow and mature along with its protagonist. The early books are short and clever, but fairly childish. The latter books are heavy, and filled with character deaths and epic battles. The two award-winning volumes slide right into the middle at three and four, which results in a nice balance of light and heavy, and this is probably my favorite era – the formula hasn’t broken, but it’s maturing.

Prisoner of Azkaban may be my favorite for this very reason. It manages to maintain some of the series' early innocence and charm, but the threats seem more real than ever, and Rowling does a great deal of world-building that hints at the magical world outside of Hogwarts and gives some more background to some of the characters. Sirius Black, a key follower of the dark wizard Voldemort, has escaped from the nototious Azkaban prison. He betrayed Harry’s parents, and there are hints that he is coming to kill Harry himself. Meanwhile, Dementors, the grisly and ghostly guards of Azkaban also frighten and endanger Harry as they hunt for Black. There are the usual number of intricate, interlocking mysteries that you get in a Harry Potter book, as well as some of the usual magical gadgets; this has my favorites: an interactive map of the school grounds and a limited time travel necklace that Rowling puts to great use.

It may be obvious by now, but I am a fan of these books. Rowling is a great plotter, and she reweaves some tired fantasy tropes into something that feels both original and classic (I’ve heard it claimed that these books rip off Earthsea and/or Ender’s Game, but I don’t see it. The school setting is old and oft-used, and the mood is completely different. Orson Scott Card sure seems convinced though!). The prose makes for a fast-paced read, though it can get a little precious, even for a children’s book. Still, the books are fun and exciting, and I think they offer plenty for adults. But you’ve probably already read them, so you don’t need me to tell you.

Grade: A-

I also want to mention that the film version, directed by the excellent Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, ifantastic. By far, it’s the best of the film versions, as it steers away from the childish schlock of Chris Columbus’s first two films and creates a new visual style that clearly influenced all of the subsequent films. He really plays up the urban fantasy elements, and his Hogwarts is more spacious and engrossing. It was nominated for a Hugo in 2005, and maybe should have won (actually, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind should have won, but that’s a debate for another day). I highly recommend it.

1999 Locus Fantasy – A CLASH OF KINGS by George R. R. Martin

Before I move onto the last decade of coverage, I wanted to tie up one loose end from the ‘90s (that I didn’t read in time to hit in the natural order…but close enough). This is going to be a very short review, even though it’s another rather long, epic book. Why so short? Two reasons: 1) It’s too difficult to discuss the plot much without spoiling major plot points from A Game of Thrones. 2) this whole post can be summed up rather neatly in three words: I. Was. Wrong.

Now, I wasn’t that wrong. I gave the first novel a solid B, which is not all that bad by my grading standards. But, I also complained that the book had a lack of world-building, over-reliance on shallow conceptions of medieval Europe, and a focus on nobility (in many different senses of the word) that I found off-putting. This volume so directly addressed and overcame those objections, that I can’t help but think I completely misjudged, maybe even misunderstood the previous volume.* The world-building here is amazing. Several new elements are added, religion and magic are fleshed out, and characters spends much of the novel discussing the history of the continent of Westeros. This is certainly the most background information I’ve seen in a novel series this side of Tolkien. These historical interludes could feel like unnecessary diversions, but each manages to illuminate or resonate with the situations the characters find themselves in. All of the characters show off greater depth, and I have growing sympathy for some of the “evil” characters of the first novel, while the “good” characters are forced to make some very tough ethical choices. Finally, we see how hollow the concepts of chivalry and aristocracy are, while also witnessing more of how the struggles for power between the principle characters impact the lives of the “small folk,” and also how they can and will make their own voices heard, even in a strictly hierarchical world.

I do still have a few complaints though. Two books in, and it *still* feels like Martin is mostly moving the pieces into place. The story is very intricate and chaotic at the same time, and it only seems to get moreso with each passing chapter. I don’t really have a sense of narrative structure here, and I can only hope that Martin has some kind of plan. Also, one of the characters and his storyline were so annoying that they drove me nuts (*cough*Theon*cough*). It’s one of those things where I have to give a grudging respect for the author for managing to get such a rise out of me…but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant. Maybe Martin will address these objections as well as the series goes on.

Also, what a lousy cover. It really misrepresents the tone of the series. The newer, simpler paperback covers are much nicer.

This was a great read, and I’m looking forward to seeing it on HBO next year and reading the next volume.

Grade: A-

*The excellent HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones (while will hopefully show up on next year’s Hugo ballot, preferably the whole series in “Long Form”) makes me feel the same way.

[Note: There was a long ranty post up here this morning about overreactions to Blackout/All Clear winning the Hugo. There's nothing sinister about my pulling it down; I just didn't think it was a very good post. It seemed kind of silly to rant about other people's rants, especially to defend a book I hardly liked.]

1997 Locus Fantasy – A GAME OF THRONES by George R. R. Martin

Ah, we come to the end of 1997, and we just happen to come upon a novel with a high profile televisions adaptation debuting on HBO over the weekend. Okay, I shuffled the schedule a little bit to get this in here, but not much!

George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is one of the biggest sensations in fantasy from the past fifteen years not named Harry Potter. It certainly built up quite a cache within the geek community. At six or seven books, averaging about a thousand pages each, it’s not the longest high fantasy series of all time, but it’s up there. It certainly gives Martin room to stretch out and tell a very epic story, to the extent that this first volume feels like 800 pages of prologue.

Martin has created a relatively gritty world, where many of the fantasy elements, like dragons, mages, legendary warriors, and “children of the forest,” are pushed to the fringes. The novel’s little person, rather than coming from some separate race of dwarves or hobbits, is a human with a genetic condition. Most of the novel focuses on the political maneuverings of a few of the world’s noble families. We especially focus on the noble Starks from the north, and the scheming Lannisters. Eddard Stark is a close friend of the King, and becomes his Hand (sort of a Chief of Staff), while Cersei Lannister is the King’s wife. Eddard’s five legitimate children find themselves caught up in this contest, as do Cersei’s brothers, including Tyrion, the aforementioned little person. Meanwhile, Eddard’s bastard son Jon Snow takes a position on the northern Wall, a frontier beyond which mystical forces are perhaps marshalling for an invasion as a decades-long winter threatens to descend on the world. We also see Daenerys, the daughter of the previous domineering king, whom the Starks and Lannisters had overthrown. She marries into a grounp of Mongol-like nomads in an attempt to marshal an army to retake the throne for her family. Each chapter follows one of the eight or so main characters as the political situation slowly falls apart within and the threats grow from without.

Martin’s prose isn’t fancy, but it’s quite effective. He can establish a scene with rich details, or he can move things along at a quick pace when necessary. He’s created a very rich world with some compelling characters, and it’s easy to see why these books are so popular. However, I have to say that I didn’t quite love this novel as much as I wanted to, but I’m not sure it’s Martin’s fault. As I’ve been realizing since I read the Riddlemaster trilogy, High Fantasy doesn’t do much for me these days. I’m not going to say I’ve grown out of High Fantasy, because that sounds more judgmental than I mean to be. I guess I’d say that High Fantasy and I have grown apart. For instance, even though I admired the detailed character work that Martin does here, which really does the most to set this fantasy series apart from others, I didn’t like many of the characters. The Starks’ high fallutin’ nobility, their obsession with honor and loyalty, were all somewhat alienating. The only characters I related to on any level were Tyrion, Jon Snow, and maybe Eddard’s proto-feminist daughter Arya. All of them are as alienated from this society by conditions of their birth as I would feel. Martin deserves a lot of credit for creating these outsider characters to question the values of his medieval society – values which are too often unexamined in other fantasy works. But, that doesn’t change the fact that this novel made me spend a solid 500 or more pages with characters I didn’t find particularly interesting. I will say that there were some very captivating bits near the end where they began to delve deeper into the world’s mythology that I really enjoyed, and the final chapter contained a pretty great twist.

It’s an impressive book, and I’m looking forward to the HBO adaptation. I also want to read more…eventually. The next two volumes also won the Locus Fantasy award, in ’99 and ’01, but I think I may wait a while longer before I dig back in…

Grade: B

1993 Locus Fantasy and WFA – LAST CALL by Tim Powers

Tim Powers is pretty well-known in the sf community, but it still surprises me that his name isn’t even more widely circulated. Two of the hottest sub-genres of speculative fiction these days are steampunk and urban fantasy. Powers’ 1983 novel The Anubis Gates is considered a foundational text of the former, and this novel should probably be considered a foundational text of the latter.

The novel mixes the mythic history of the rapid growth of Las Vegas, which is closely tied to Bugsy Siegel and the mafia, with the superstitions of chronic gamblers and playing cards’ roots as tarot cards. In Powers' world, luck and probability can be manipulated under the right conditions, and enacting certain rituals can elevate some players and destroy others. In the late 1940s Scott Crane’s father enters a contest to take the metaphysical position of “king” of Las Vegas from Bugsy and chooses to sacrifice his sons. Scott escapes and a wily cardshark named Ozzie adopts him. In 1969, Scott loses his soul in a magical card game with a tarot deck. In the present, this debt has come due, but a desperate cancer patient named Archimedes Mavroanos seeks Scott out when he learns that probability seems to bend around him. The two go on a quest to Vegas to save Scott’s soul. And a whole bunch of other stuff happens.

The first hundred pages of this novel were really irresistible. Powers uses the simple yet propelling prose of noir fiction while also creating the sense of a rich and complex magical world with its own rules just beneath the surface. That sense of a secret world is the essence of urban fantasy, and I haven’t seen anyone but Neil Gaiman do it better than Powers does here.

The great momentum of the opening chapters does fade, however, as Powers’ plot gets increasingly complex and more and more characters join the fray. My plot synopsis didn’t even touch Scott’s adopted sister and her family, Scott’s zombified brother, Scott’s dead wife, the hapless assassin, various fortune-tellers, or the boy raised in a giant Skinner-box to be the greatest gambler ever. These are all great ideas, but they also get in the way of the plot, and the novel really loses its momentum in the second half. And, it all comes together just a little too neatly in the end. It’s a very fun book that creates a compelling world of magic within our own, but a slimmer, more efficient version could have been truly great. Still, Last Call is nearly so.

Grade: B

1990 Nebula and 1991 Locus Fantasy – TEHANU by Ursula K Leguin

Between 1968 and 1972, Ursula K. LeGuin published her Earthsea trilogy. These novels (which I had not read before, so I read them in preparation for Tehanu) are among the great classics of the fantasy genre; I’d say Earthsea ranks just below Narnia and Middle-Earth in the fantasy pantheon, though it’s not as well known among the general public as those two series. The series follows a young boy named Ged on a world of islands and ancient magic as he learns the depths of his own power, becomes the arch-mage, and battles ancient evils. It’s influence has been dramatic – Riddlemaster feels very derivative of Earthsea, and Ged’s time in wizard school is very reminiscent of a more recent fantasy phenomenon.

The original trilogy suffers from a few of the fantasy tropes that I personally dislike, especially the stilted, myth-inspired prose that I’ve complained about in the past, but I think its reputation is well-deserved. Even when she’s using a voice that I don’t particularly care for, LeGuin is an amazing writer. She captures the wonder of dragons and ancient tombs, and she describes the workings of magic better than anyone before (and maybe since).

The trilogy feels fairly complete, as the final volume threatens the whole world of magic while exploring the relationship between life and death and effectively ends the arc of the main character. However, LeGuin decided to return to Earthsea in 1990 to explore the issue of gender in Tehanu. In the original trilogy she meant to subvert fantasy literature by making her central characters non-white. I’d say that this concern seems somewhat dated (I barely noticed), but, then again, the casting of the recent SyFy channel movie suggests that this is still an issue. So, race subverted, but the fact that the world of wizards is completely male went by without much notice. The second book of the trilogy does focus on a girl named Tenar, who becomes a priestess and has to overcome the restrictions of her religion and sex to help Ged, but LeGuin clearly felt there was more to be said.

So, in this book, we return to Tenar, decades after her previous appearance in The Tombs of Atuan. We check in on Ged’s old mentor, the now-dying Ogion, and we learn that there are actual restrictions on women’s use of magic. Eventually, Ged shows up, exhausted and powerless from his confrontation in the third book, and Ged and Tenar must work together to help an abused young girl named Therru and to avoid conflict with the sexist wizard Aspen.

The tone and language is completely different from the previous Earthsea novels, and reading all four books together really highlighted the clash. The first three books are epic quests, narrated as legendary tales. This novel is far more grounded, quiet, even pastoral, and it moves slowly, without much plot development. It’s interesting to step into this world and get a more intimate look at it, but it turned out there wasn’t much to see.

The book continually returns to the question of how women’s power differs from men, and comes up with the answer that women are more...earthy...and stuff. I found this trite and unsatisfying. With an entire world at her fingertips, I just expected LeGuin to do more than rehash old arguments and give us examples of victimization and repression that could have come from almost any era of real history.

I like the idea behind this novel: let’s look at why this great world she created seems to be implicitly sexist and use that to explore gender roles in a fantasy setting. I think the problem here is that LeGuin has set out to write a dogmatic novel rather than letting the questions arise organically. She forces the issue at every turn, and plot, character, and world-building all suffer as a result.

Grade: C-

1988 Locus Fantasy - SEVENTH SON by Orson Scott Card

I haven’t been too impressed with Orson Scott Card’s work so far, but I was intrigued by the Alvin Maker series. I am a historian, and I actually specialize in frontiers during the Early Republic, an era that gets short shrift in a lot of fiction. The idea of a historical fantasy that eschews the typical medieval or Renaissance European settings is refreshing and full of potential. Card also does a nice job grounding much of the magic of his world in the actual folk beliefs of nineteenth century America. In this alternate history, the English Commonwealth survived the death of James Cromwell, and the American revolutionaries seem to have been mostly defeated by this Puritan Empire, though there are hints of Thomas Jefferson still active in the South and a United States has formed in the Middle Colonies and the west.

Unfortunately, none of this really figures into this novel, and the main difference from recorded history is that all the place names are spelled differently, often in annoyingly cutesy ways: the Mississippi is the Mizzipy, the Ohio is the Hio, the Wabash is the Wobbish, the Illinois is the Noisy, and so on. Instead of dealing with the big differences of this world, the novel follows the frontier childhood of Alvin Miller, the seventh son of a seventh son, imbued with great power and a greater destiny. We start with Alvin’s difficult birth in a storm, and see him almost killed several time by strange accidents. Then, a wandering mystic named Taleswapper shows up to tell Alvin of his power and help him survive one last disaster. And, that’s all there is to this entry in the series.

My biggest problem with the book is that it moves so slowly and only covers Alvin through his adolescence. Card clearly knew that he was writing for a series, which is fine, but this novel did not work as a standalone book for me. It’s slow moving and inconsequential; we mostly just hear about how great Alvin will be. I also was more than a little bothered to see we have yet another perfect young man as our hero. Card is apparently only interested in messiah-like superbeings as his characters. Alvin is Ender all over again.

It’s been interesting to see Card’s prose develop very rapidly over the three novels I’ve read. Ender’s Game was very plain and unaffected, but both Speaker and Seventh Son employ a folksier style that feels like diluted Twain. It’s at least unique, but it can become cloying. It also lacks authenticity in this setting; Card’s idea of writing Early Republic characters is to have them use double (and triple) negatives and the contraction “ain’t.” He employs little of the period’s distinctive vocabulary, shaped by the King James Bible and regional colloquialisms.

If I wanted to continue on with the series, I would have plenty of opportunities. There have been six books so far, and four of them won the Locus Fantasy award. And, the next novel appears to deal with the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, two of the most fascinating characters in American history, who are often neglected in historical fiction. I don’t think I will continue though. Card clearly has a lot of fascinating ideas, but I’m just not interested in the deliberate multi-book pacing, flat characters, moralizing, and thinly-veiled references to his own religion and ideology that increasingly seem to characterize his work.

No review Friday in respect for post-Turkey Day shopping/food comas. I'll be back on Monday with 1988's WFA winner.

Grade: C+

1986 Locus Fantasy – THE TRUMPS OF DOOM by Roger Zelazny

The Trumps of Doom is the sixth novel in Zelazny’s beloved Amber series of fantasy novels. The first quintet of short books is narrated by Corwyn, a man who wakes up with amnesia in 20^th century America. As Corwyn begins to explore his lost past, he discovers that he is from the royal family of Amber, a majestic city that is the true world – Earth is only a shadow. The series begins with a noir feel – Corwyn is tough, street smart, and morally flexible and he moves through a world of femme fatales and seedy lowlifes. By the end, it’s sword and sorcery, as Corwyn gathers armies, clobbers demons, and goes on spirit quests to fight mystical plots and contest the throne of Amber. The genre shifts dramatically, but Corwyn is always hyper-macho.

This novel starts a new quintet, and resets the table with a new narrator: Merlin. Merlin has his own connections to Amber (which I won’t get into too much, so as not to spoil the earlier books), but at the novel’s beginning he’s living on our Earth, working for an IT company, and someone is trying to kill him. As he attempts to find the would-be assassin, he uncovers an underground of sorcery based on the magic of Amber, and learns that many of his friends know more about his origins than seems possible. Eventually, he journeys back to Amber to learn more about what’s happening, and ends up in the same colossal and cosmic conflicts that always occur at the climax of these novels.

Zelazny’s hitting on a lot of the same themes here that we’ve seen him take on before: tough guy anti-heroes with connections to mythical figures (Earth mythology is an echo of the “real” princes and princesses of Amber) fighting brutal-but-cosmic battles. The female characters are marginal (the princesses of Amber scheme, but the princes are the true center of the conflicts). The ever-escalating stakes and fuzzy nature of “reality” get old after a while, and the series as a whole felt a bit repetitive to me. They are fun though, and I especially like these first books that spend a lot of time on Earth and introduce a lot of mysteries. After six books, however, I think I’m finished with the series, despite this entry ending on a cliffhanger.

Grade: B

1985 Locus Fantasy - JOB: A COMEDY OF JUSTICE by Robert Heinlein

For old time’s sake, we get one last spin with Robert Anson Heinlein – as a fantasy winner, surprisingly.

The novel begins with Alex Hergensheimer, a Christian activist from an alternate America run by fundamentalists and frequented by zeppelins, without airplanes or television. Hergensheimer walks on hot coals while on a tropical cruise, faints, and wakes up in an alternate universe that is no more technically advanced but much more freewheeling and immodest than his own. He falls in love with a young pagan stewardess named Margrethe, and the two soon find themselves in yet another world, more like our own. Every time they shift worlds, they tend to lose all of their money (or it becomes useless), so most of the novel is spent following Alex and Margrethe as they try to hitchhike back to Kansas through various worlds, washing dishes and waiting tables along the way. Alex suspects that there may be a divine reason for his universe-hopping, and it turns out he’s right. Eventually, we get Heinlein’s irreverent take on heaven and hell, Satan and God.

I’ve mentioned before that Heinlein’s later work tended to be a bit sex-obsessed; Job is no exception, though maybe it’s a bit more modest than the average late-Heinlein. We hear a lot about Alex’s sexual adventures, his lust for Margrethe and his other dalliances. Heinlein has fun taking a Christian fundamentalist through these sexual adventures, but it’s not like his internal conflicts are that complex. Overall, the atmosphere is very light. Very very light. And yet, I didn’t find it all that funny. I think Heinlein hoped to shock readers into a few laughs with his irreverence, but it’s all pretty tame by today’s standards. Actually, the religion material is relatively tame by Mark Twain’s standards – Heinlein’s just more prurient.

So, the jokes don’t work, and Heinlein’s descriptions of Alex’s dishwashing and various lusts get very tedious. Yeah, I didn’t really like this novel at all. I wanted to say one last good bye to the one of the masters of the genre, but I should have remembered that his later material just doesn’t work. Another dimension-hopping Locus fantasy nominee from this year, Stephen King and Peter Straub’s The Talisman, is a far better novel.

Grade: C-

1984 Locus Fantasy - THE MISTS OF AVALON by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Fantasy writer Marion Zimmer Bradley caused a pretty big stir with this feminist retelling of Arthurian legend. I think most of my female friends and many of my male friends read it in high school (I did too…though it took me a long time).

Bradley has two connected agendas here. The first is to place King Arthur in a particular historical context. Most popular retellings these days seem to put Arthur in the High Middle Ages. To be fair, this was when Arthur was at the height of his popularity and romances about the famous Guinevere/Lancelot/Arthur love triangle abounded. But I suspect it’s actually because people want knights in shining armor. If Arthur lived (which is certainly debatable) it was in the 6^th century – 500 years earlier. By years, it’s the equivalent of putting Crusaders in Civil War garb and giving them rifles. Anyway, Bradley sets this firmly in an earlier time period: the shadow of the Roman occupation still hangs over Britain, and Saxons are invading. She also highlights the conflicts between Britain’s pagans and the increasing Christian presence in the isles, which is a very intriguing and dramatic historical moment that doesn’t get much attention in fiction.

Her second, and more prominent, agenda, is telling the Arthurian legend from a female, and explicitly feminist, point of view. The action centers on Arthur’s sister Morgaine (who you might know better as Morgan le Fay). She’s usually rendered as an evil sorceress, but here she is a priestess and the protector of the mystical island of Avalon. The beautiful Gwenhwyfar (er…Guinevere) also gets a lot of attention; she encourages Arthur to convert to Christianity, even while her own choices are often circumscribed by her position as queen. We also get passages from Arthur’s mother Igraine and her sister, the Lady of the Lake (it turns out that everyone in this book is related – which means there’s incest galore!)

The plot is largely familiar – Excalibur, the grail quest, Mordred, Merlin, and Lancelot and Gwenhwyfar’s affair all figure in, though with unique spins. Everything boils down to the battle between patriarchal and repressive Christianity, and spiritual and feminist paganism. The magic is muted and relates only to the vague powers and spells of the priestesses of Avalon.

The book runs a bit long (thus my struggles in high school), and the dialogue is of the stilted-and-bone-dry variety that can drive me crazy in so many fantasy novels, but this is otherwise a very well-written novel, and the character of Morgaine is fantastically well-drawn. You can tell that Bradley was passionate about this heroine, and I really did grow to love her. The setting and central conflict are also absolutely fascinating. I wouldn’t put this at the top of my too-read list, but it’s certainly a novel that I would recommend to fans of fantasy, and especially to fans of Arthurian legend. But, they've probably all already read and loved it.

Grade: A-

1983 Locus Fantasy - THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR by Gene Wolfe

Another installment in Wolfe’s dying-earth epic The Book of the New Sun, and we get new companions, new hints and mysteries about Urth, and more misery for the narrator Severian.

Severian finally makes it to the city of Thrax that he set off for midway through book one, and things don’t go well there. From there, various monsters, mutated bandits, wizards, aliens, etc. try to kill Serverian and steal his legendary sword and/or the magical claw of the conciliator. The writing is still literate and lyrical yet highly entertaining. Wolfe manages to maintain a really rich sense of mystery throughout the whole series, and he’s constantly adding details and raising new questions. In this volume we get to see some witches, ancient technology, and we begin to learn a lot more about the presence of aliens on Urth (known as cacogens to the locals).

On the negative side, the series’ bleakness is beginning to pile up to dangerous levels. I mean, it was always obvious that a story about a conflicted torturer wandering a dying Earth was going to be dark, but Wolfe really keeps dialing up the gut punches to Severian (and the reader) as the series goes along. Severian has consistently gained and lost companions over his journeys, but some of the losses in this volume are especially brutal, and the trail of death that follows Severian is almost getting monotonous.

Still, The Book of the New Sun remains a great series, and I would put this volume on the same level as The Shadow of the Torturer, though it was probably not quite as good as the Claw of the Conciliator.

Grade: A

2010 Hugo, Locus Fantasy, WFA, Clarke, 2009 BSFA Winner: THE CITY & THE CITY by China Miéville

One of the central stories of the twentieth century is the drawing (and redrawing) of borders. As empires rose and fell over the course of the first two world wars (the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, the British, the Soviet, etc.) borders kept changing, countries were partitioned, and we got immigration debates, ethnic cleansing, and global terrorism as a result. So, it’s an immensely important issue, but one that sf has not delved into often.

China Miéville’s The City & The City is all about the fictions and realities of borders, which are always arbitrary on some level. The Eastern European (maybe Balkan?) cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma not only border each other, they share the same space and are almost everywhere entagled. Therefore, just walking or driving down the street, citizens must always watch not to violate the border by seeing into the other city or even accidentally stepping into it. The novel is full of rich cultural details that explain how much the border defines the everyday lives of the people in this “divided city;” Miéville highlights the fact that borders are human constructions by creating a situation in which people must constantly construct one. Anyone who does violate this border falls into the grasp of a secret police force that bridges the cities called Breach. I would’ve liked a little more history as to how this came about, but I see why Mieville avoided the question (what would be believable?). Still, it would be nice to hear more about how these cities existed on the contentious borders of the Ottoman Empire or the Warsaw Pact.

The actual plot unfolds as a noir mystery. Tyador Borlú is a police detective in Besźel who is to solve the death of a young woman with ties to Ul Qoma. As the mystery unfolds, it raises all sorts of questions about the border, the cities’ twinned histories, and Breach. These genre conventions keep the novel moving at a brisk pace and they make it imminently readable. They also provide some of the novel’s few problems. It is, by necessity, somewhat formulaic, and parts of this novel will feel very familiar if you know the genre at all (it’s very reminiscent of Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union, either through direct inspiration or the shared inspirations). It’s very well done here, though, and the result makes for an engaging read that still leaves a lot to think about. I also personally prefer this concrete murder mystery approach to the dreamlike version of a similar idea in Valente’s Palimpsest. This was a fantastic novel, and it’s easy to see why it’s won so many sf awards this season.

Grade: A-