Martin's Booklog

Ethan of Athos — Lois McMaster Bujold

Published on November 10, 20141 Comment

Cover of Ethan of Athos

Ethan of Athos
Lois McMaster Bujold
237 pages
published in 1986

Ethan of Athos is the third published book in Bujold’s Vorkosigan series and the third published in 1986. Whereas Shards of Honor told the story of how Miles Vorkosigan’s parents met and The Warrior’s Apprentice showed his first adventure, this is a spinoff not featuring any of the main characters in the series. In fact, at first it barely seems to take place in the same universe.

It all starts on the all male planet of Athos (named after the all-male Greek monastry on mount Athos, natch) where Ethan’s greatest worry is how to take his relationship a stage further and get his boyfriend to be more responsible. His dayjob is as a obstetrician. On a planet full of men natural child birth is of course impossible so uterine replicators using female gene cultures taken along by the original colonists are used instead. Recently these cultures have started to deteriorate however, showing their age and new cultures have been ordered from Jackson’s Whole. Unfortunately, once they show up, these turn out to be unusable thrash. Despite their desire to remain cut off from the rest of the Galaxy, the people of Athos have no choice but to send somebody out into the darkness, somebody pure who can handle the temptations of women, somebody like, well, Ethan.

Ethan is very much an innocent abroad, who course immediately stumbles into a conspiracy surrounding the lost cultures, as he’s kidnapped by Cetegandian agents, the dominant military power, who think he’s some sort of intelligence agent. They’re looking for a Terrance Cee, who turns out to be one of their escaped genetic experiments, a limited telepath who had used the shipment of tissue cultures to Athos to smuggle out the genes of his murdered female counterpart.

He’s in over his head, but luckily he stumbled into Elli Quinn, of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, taking a recuperative holiday after the events of The Warrior’s Apprentice. She’s actually in the employ of the Jackson’s Whole House responsible for the shipment of gene tissues to Athos, to keep an eye on the Cetegandians and find out what their interest in it is. Ethan, Terrance and Elli have to reluctantly team up to defeat their enemies, despite Ethan’s severe misgivings about women as the source of all evil.

As per usual with Bujold the plot and story is compelling enough that it’s hard to miss the serious world building underneath. Ethan’s consciousness raising with regards to the true nature of women is obvious enough, but the society of Athos itself deserves more attention. The planet without men is a hoary old sf cliche, but planets without women are rare if non-existent. Athos was founded as a refuge for what its founders thought were a persecuted minority, ridiculous as that sounds. It still has that siege mentality in its dealings with the wider galaxy and frex the access to galactic literature, but the society itself is refreshingly normal. Athos is a planet full of homosexual men, where heterosexuality is not just rare, but impossible. This is a single gender planet that’s not a monstrosity or missing something.

It also shows how early in her writing Bujold has been writing about what you might call traditional female concerns, dressed up in mil-sf adventure romps. The whole story is arguably driven by Ethan (and by extension, Athos) need to start a family. He starts in a traditionally female, nurturing role and doesn’t transform into an action hero but returns happily to his chosen career. Bujold presents all this matter of factly; she has that knack of slipping these sort of outrageous ideas if you think about them for a moment quietly past the reader.

It’s fun to see how different and yet recognisable by the same writer each of the three novels Bujold got published in 1986 were and how ambitious in retrospect she already was. Ethan of Athos, though usually seen as a minor novel in the Vorkosigan series, really is as ambitious and interesting as any of them.

The Dreamblood Duology — N. K. Jemisin

Published on November 9, 2014Leave a comment

Cover of The Killing Moon

The Killing Moon & The Shadowed Sun
N. K. Jemisin
415/504 pages
published in 2012

Have you ever reached that point where you’ve read twothirds of a fantasy trilogy, quite like the writer but don’t want to read the last novel because it would mean rereading the first two? Yeah, that happened to me with N. K. Jemisin’s The Inheritance Trilogy, so instead I read her new series, The Dreamblood duology. Both The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun were published in 2012 and can be read as standalones, though you’ll miss a lot of the background if you only read The Shadowed Sun.

One of my ongoing frustrations with fantasy in general is how few novels take their inspiration from anything but medieval Europe. Medievaloid worlds as filtered through Tolkien and his imitators — where you can find pipe smoking peasants eating potoes with their turkey but few people of colour –are a dime a dozen, but books with Egypt as a source of worldbuilding are rare. In fact, The Dreamblood duology is the first series I can remember reading with Egypt as the inspiration for its setting, polytheism, annual flooding river surrounded by desert, powersharing between the priesthood and nominal god-king and all. What’s more, Jemisin was also inspired by Egypt’s historical relationship with Kush, the kingdom to the south of it in what’s now Sudan, who shared its culture and at times actually ruled it. In short, this is one fantasy in which pale Northern European heroes are in short supply.

Of course whenever any author moves out of the ruts of medievaloid fantasy they run the risk of cultural appropriation, of exchanging one set of cliches for another. Which may be why Jemisin is at pains in her foreword to establish that while she was inspired by Egypt and Kush, Gujaareh and Kisua aren’t meant to be exact mirrors of them. Certainly the religious setup, while superficially reminiscent of ancient Egypt, doesn’t look anything like the real Egyptian pantheon.

Instead the religion in the city state of Gujaareh revolves around moon goddes worship, of Hananja, the Goddess of the Dreaming Moon, much larger than its companion the Waking Moon and whose description makes clear that the Dreaming Moon is actually a gas giant around which the world revolves. No wonder than that it plays such a large role in Gujaareh religion, with Hananja’s priests, the Hetawa, ruling the city state in tandem with its prince. They’re responsible for public justice as well as public health, using dream magic tithed from the city’s population, magic that comes in different flavours as dreams come in different flavours and is cared for and used by seperate classes of priests.

And the most elite class of priests are the Gatherers, the priests who gather those too sick or old or selfish to seek the peace of the goddess on their own. Instead Gatherers like Ehiru visit these people in their homes, bringing the peace of the Goddess to them. All voluntarily done of course, with the exception of those found to be corrupt.

For Nijiri, recently apprenticed to Ehiru to learn to become a Gatherer, this is right and proper. Gatherers serve the Goddess just as Sentinels and Sharers and all the other priests and priestesses do and some would say theirs was the noblest path, bringing peace to those who suffer. The Kisuati envoy Sunandi is more cynical; in Kisua all these magics are suspect and the Gatherers look like just a thin excuse to murder enemies of the Goddess. And now that her old mentor has been murdered for discovering proof of the use of magic even the priests of Gujareeh find an abomination, she’s afraid that sooner or later the Gatherers will find her corrupt.

There is in fact corruption, but not in her. Rather, a parody of a Gatherer is loose, a demon that seeks dreamblood of anybody it comes across. What’s worse is the reason it exists: somebody deliberately set it loose on Gujareeh and is protecting it. To what end, Ehiru and his assistent Nijiri undertake to find out before whoever is behind the demon achieves it. Sunandi is doing the same from her end and of course she and Ehiru meet and come to a grudging respect, having to work together to end the threat to both their countries.

The plot was gripping enough to keep me awake during the daily commute in the darkest days of January, but it’s the world building that’s the real star of this novel. It’s not just the Egyptian inspired society of Gujareeh, but the fact that it isn’t populated with just more white people. Jemisin is a writer with things to say about race and gender and she’s great in doing so in a way that it doesn’t become didactic.

Cover of The Shadowed Sun

The Shadowed Sun takes place ten years after The Killing Moon, at the end of which Gujareeh has been put under a Kisuati Protectorate. That had been the only way to contain and destroy the evil taking place in the city state, to prevent it from spreading abroad. Now however the inhabitants are suffering under the Kisuati yoke, no matter how light, especially in the disrespect directed to the priesthood. Sunandi, now the Voice of the Protectorate in Gujareeh knows better than most Kisuati the bond between the citizens and their priests and she does her best to keep provocations at a minimum. Nijiri meanwhile, grown out of Ehiru’s shadow and a full grown Gatherer, knows this is not enough and things need to change again.

Change is coming internally, in the form of Hanani, the first female apprentice to the Sharers, the healers amongst the priests of Hananja. This is change that’s not everywhere received well, as the Gujareeh people believing very much in different roles for men and women, with the latter being goddesses that should be revered at home. Which is very much the usual sort of bullshit propagated by, well, men, something also noted by Sunandi in The Killing Moon.

Change is also coming from outside, in the form of Wanahomen, the heir to Gujareeh’s prince, who died in the previous book. Afther the Kisuati invasion Wanahomen’s mother fled to the barbarian desert tribes that had always been a thorn in the side of Gujareeh and now Wanahomen hopes to use them to overthrow the Kisuati Protectorate.

Meanwhile another dream evil is stalking the streets of the city states, but whereas in the first book it had been a nightmare made flesh, this time it is an epidemic of fatal nightmares. Once again dream magic is used for political gain without thoughts for the consequences of such use.

With The Shadowed Sun Jemisin managed to produce a sequel that follows on logically from the previous book without being more of the same. She manages to explore Gujareeh’s society and its attitudes to gender relations more without using strawmen or having it be extraordinarily similar to our own. What I liked especially was how both Gujareeh and Kisua have more and less “progressive” aspects to their respective societies, in ways that made sense.

To conclude then, this duology was one of the better fantasy series I’ve read in the last couple of years, an improvement on Jemisin’s already impressive writing in her first series.

Styx — Bavo Dhooge

Published on November 8, 20142 Comments

Cover of Styx

Styx
Bavo Dhooge
295 pages
published in 2014

I hadn’t heard of Bavo Dhooge before I saw this book spotlighted in the Amsterdam public Library in their new additions section, near to where you hand in your borrowed books. It was the cover blurb saying that this was going to published in America that drew me to it and the back cover blurb that sold me on it. Raphaël Styx, a corrupt and aggressive chief inspector in the Oostende police, is chasing a notorious serial killer, the Stuffer, who murders young women, takes out their organs and stuffs the bodies full of sand. So far, so predictable, but then it comes to a confrontation between Styx and the Stuffer and Styx is killed … only to raise the next day as a zombie cop. Now he has to trust his successor, the Congolese-Belgium dandy Joachim Delacroix, to help him bring the Stuffer to justice.

Zombie cop taking revenge on his killer is not a concept I’d seen before, though John Meaney’s Bone Song is set up along similar lines. That on it’s own was good enough to take a punt on, with the icing on the cake being the setting. Oostende is one of Belgium’s grand old seaside resorts, being the favourite haunts of its first two kings, but having declined a lot in the second half of the 20th century. It also was the centre of Belgian surrealism, something that turns out to be important in Styx.

Styx then starts out as a stereotypical serial killer thriller, with the Stuffer preparing his latest victim for exhibition, on the beach of Oostende. When she’s discovered, inspector Styx is called out of bed to investigate, feeling every moment of his forty years, especially his hip, which is worn down and needs replacement. He’s angry and upset with almost everything in his life: the serial killer, his colleagues, his wife and his marriage, his teenage son, his body. Delacroix, a sapeur, especially irritates him with his youth, his fancy clothes and extravagant lifestyle, the antithesis of everything Styx himself is. Delacroix is a Sunday child, with seemingly no worries, though we later learn he carries his own cross.

By the time Styx is murdered it almost comes as a relief, the more we know about the mess he’s made out of his life, getting involved in sordid affair with gangster molls, taking money from small time crooks, not being able in any way to make his wife and son know that he does love them. The problem with this is that he’s killed on page 60 and for all the cliches in his character, the setup isn’t quite enough to get you to sympathise with him. It’s only after his ressurrection that Styx gets fleshed out, so to speak.

Styx isn’t a zombie story; there are no other zombies, it’s never explained why Styx was ressurrected and nobody else nor he doesn’t crave human flesh. Instead he seems to have awakened as a good zombie, better than he was in his real life, filled with regret for what he led slip out of his hands and wanting to make things better by getting his killer. To do so he enters in a reluctant partnership with Delacroix; both men may not like each other, but they have a grudging respect for their abilities.

The disappearance of Styx’s body has enraged the Stuffer, who sees it as theft of his opportunity to create art out of the inspector. Said inspector meanwhile having flashbacks to Oostende’s artistic past and slowly becomes convinced that they have something to do with solving the Stuffer’s identity. The Stuffer already had used the identity of local painter Léon Spilliaert as an alias, not to mention wore a face mask reminiscent of James Ensor when he confronted Styx.

I’m not that familiar with Oostende or its history, having visited it once or twice, but the local colour is what makes Styx. There’s a built-in assumption that the reader knows at least a little bit about Oostende, is somewhat familiar with the town and its history. It will be interesting to see how the American translation will handle this and also how much of the Flemish flavour of the dialogue is kept.

I hadn’t heard of Bavo Dhooge before spotting this novel, but it turns out he’s written some eighty books already, mostly thrillers of one sort or another, since his debut in 2001. A speedy writer and some of that speed is noticable here, as the resolution of the story is a bit slapdash. This is not a novel to read if you enjoy watching a master detective at work. Ultimately the discovery of the Stuffer depends on coincidence rather than proper sleuthing. There was a similar problem with the beginning as well, as too much of what made Styx and the Stuffer both tick was rooted in cliche, which only changed once Styx had been zombiefied.

Not an unentertaining novel though, but I don’t see the need for a sequel.

Ter Ziele — Esther Scherpenisse

Published on November 6, 2014Leave a comment

Cover of Ter Ziele

Ter Ziele
Esther Scherpenisse
93 pages
published in 2014

Esther Scherpenisse is an up and coming Dutch fantasy writer, whose debut “Het prismaproject” in 2005 won the Paul Harland Prize in the best new writer category. Last year she managed to win the Paul Harland Prize again, but now for overall best story with “Ter Ziele”. For those unfamiliar with it, the Paul Harland Prize is an annual open competition for Dutch language science fiction, fantasy and horror stories; past winners include Thomas Olde Heuvelt, who went on to get two Hugo nominations this year and last. That last story is now available electronically as a chapbook, together with another of her short stories, “In de Mist”. That’s one of the advantages of ebooks, that you can publish chapbooks for a reasonable price rather than as expensive collectables, ideal to sample a new author.

Which is why I bought it yesterday after Esther tweeted that it was available. I’m still finding my way through the Dutch fantastika landscape after decades of not paying anything that didn’t come out in English. When I started investigating, Esther was one of the writers who had a critical buzz going for them and judging by the two stories here, that buzz is justified. These are well written stories that are as good as any published in English and I hope these will be translated sooner rather than later.

“Ter Ziele” especially touched me, both for its writing as for personal reasons, which I’ll come to later. It opens strong, with the protagonist looking on at his own grave, ready and waiting for his funeral tomorrow. Samuel however won’t be there, as he has made a deal with Death. That happens occassionally, that instead of dying Death can take you away to the middernachtsland, the midnight land, where the departed if not the dead live.

In the palace where Death delivers Samuel, all is stasis and he’s unsure how long he stands there staring at the walls, mourning the life and family he had to leave behind, when somebody starts talking to him. Erik, as he introduces himself, was taken by Death after a traffic accident over a century ago, when he was slightly younger than Samuel. Amongst the generally passive population of the palace, he stands out as does Samuel as one of the latest arrivals and they become friends, slowly telling each other their stories. Erik has a theory about why Death has taken them and not others, why they’re there and he needs someone to help him get away.

Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, Scherpenisse tells why Samuel had to make his deal. Twenty years old and with cancer recurring for the third time and this time it can’t be surpressed, his parents want him to take the deal so at least he won’t die, even if they will never see him again. These chapters are the heart of the story, that struggle with grief and mortality and not wanting to see your loved ones suffer, either from the pain of cancer or of having to watch you die.

The key scene is when Sam and his father are driving home and he explains to Sam why he wants him to take Death’s offer, because when he was the same age as his son, he had to watch his grandfather die slowly over the course of half a year. He’s scared shitless to see the same happen to his son: ‘Ik ben voor weinig dingen bang, Sam. Maar ik ben als de dood dat ik je op die manier zal verliezen.’ – “Few things frighten me, Sam. But I’m scared to death to lose you that way.”

That hit me hard, not in the least because tomorrow is the three year anniversary of my wife’s death, who died after a long illness of her own choosing, who had perhaps the best death she could’ve had in the circumstances, but it was still the hardest thing I ever had to do to watch her slowly slip away. I can so see why both Sam and his family would want to avoid this, even if the end result for his family is the same…

What I like about “Ter Ziele” is that isn’t overwrought or highly emotionally, but almost matter of fact about these matters. It’s exactly the right tone to keep the story grounded.

The other story, “In de Mist” is less emotionally draining, though shares the same themes. In a fishing village cut off from the world by thick banks of fog, each night the Fisherman comes to bring the people to sleep and to take those to him who are … different. Rika has already had her husband taken away and is fearful for her son. When her neigbour Kai, who has lost both wife and children tells her that he found where the fog ends and the Fisherman doesn’t come, she sets out with him and her son to live in freedom, only to find out that her freedom brings its own fears… A classic sort of fantasy puzzle story.

Even without the extra impact “Ter Ziele” had for me, these were two great, satisfying stories. I can’t wait to read more of Scherpenisse’s work and would like to see it translated to find a wider audience.

Uncanny magazine

Published on November 4, 2014Leave a comment

Uncanny is a new science fiction/fantasy magazine that’s just launched their first issue:

Featuring new fiction by Maria Dahvana Headley, Kat Howard, Max Gladstone, Amelia Beamer, Ken Liu, and Christopher Barzak, classic fiction by Jay Lake, essays by Sarah Kuhn, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Christopher J Garcia, plus a Worldcon Roundtable featuring Emma England, Michael Lee, Helen Montgomery, Steven H Silver, and Pablo Vazquez, poetry by Neil Gaiman, Amal El-Mohtar, and Sonya Taaffe, interviews with Maria Dahvana Headley, Deborah Stanish, Beth Meacham on Jay Lake, and Christopher Barzak, and a cover by Galen Dara.

Looks good and it’ll be available for free online as well for those with less money to spent on sf magazines. These can be a real crapshoot in terms of overall quality and of course a launch issue will be putting its best foot forward, so it depends on whether you trust the people behind it. At the very least, they do pay their writers.

We do seem to be a new golden age for short science fiction, with a great many interesting and strong online magazines already existing. It’ll be hard for Uncanny to find its place amongst them, but I wish them the best.