Martin's Booklog

Cry of the Newborn — James Barclay

Published on January 2, 2009

Cover of Cry of the Newborn

Cry of the Newborn
James Barclay
819 pages
published in 2005

James Barclay is not a writer I had heard of before I got this book out of the library. The backcover blurb sounded interesting and the frontcover sported a quote by Steven Erikson, one of my favourite fantasy writers, so while the first few pages I sampled were a bit dull I thought I’d take a chance. The library also had the sequel, but I didn’t put that one up as this was big enough already; I could always get it next time. But I don’t think I will. Erikson’s blurb said that Cry of the Newborn was “a most extraordinary and impressively ambitious novel”, but in reality it was just a bog standard epic fantasy novel. Not a bad novel by any standards, competently written certainly, but nothing special.

The story revolves around a typical fantasy prophecy, that one day humans can ascend to godhood, having the same powers as the Omniscient. This belief is however a heresy to the Order, the state church, which prosecuted and killed off all believers in this prophecy and destroyed all knowledge of it hundreds of years ago, or so it believes. The truth is otherwise, with the heretics believing in Ascendancy having gone to ground in Westfallen, a sheltered corner of the Estorian Concord where their centuries old breeding process has finally borne succes. Generation after generation managed to produce some people with special powers, but most of these powers were weak and often lost at a later age. It’s only at the start of the story that the first generation of true Ascendants is born, four children with potential powers rivaling the Omniscient itself. Cry of the Newborn is the story of their coming of age, in a time when their country is in grave peril.

Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks — Christopher Brookmyre

Published on December 30, 2008

Cover of Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks

Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks
Christopher Brookmyre
343 pages
published in 2007

Picture Richard Dawkins with all his disdain for religion and new agery intact but a better sense of umour and a career as a thriller writer rather than a scientist and you have Christopher Brookmyre. Especially in his Jack Parlabane series, of which Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks is the latest installment, religion and quackery are what motivates the villains with the hero being a rational atheist who makes sport from revealing the hypocrisy of religious authorities. At times this relentless hostility, no matter how well deserved does get a bit tedious even for me. If you’re at all religious, Brookmyre is probably not your cup of tea.

With Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks Brookmyre shifts his focus slightly, from organised religion to quackery: spiritualism to be precise. Yes, it’s Jack Parlabane versus those parasites on human misery, the douchebags who pretend to be able to contact the dead when all they have is a lack o shame and a talent for cold reading. Jack knows it’s all nonsense, the dead are dead and there’s no such thing as ghost but there’s one niggling little detail: Jack has become a ghost himself. He’s dead, fallen out of a four storey window and landed on his headm but he’s still here narrating. How is that’s possible? He doens’t know but he knows he doesn’t like it and certainly grudges having to admit that the Woo peddlers might just be right…

The H-Bomb Girl — Stephen Baxter

Published on November 17, 2008

Cover of The H-Bomb Girl

The H-Bomb Girl
Stephen Baxter
265 pages
published in 2007

This is a book that’s going to give me nightmares, I can tell. Because I grew up as a kid in the Second Cold War, the last kids to grow up in the shadow of Nuclear Holocaust, when one side was ruled by a succesion of doddering paranoid old men who had gotten their job training under Uncle Stalin and the other was governed by a cowboy actor who half the time seem to believed he had been the war hero his b-movie career had portrayed him, I’ve always been fascinated and horrified by nuclear war. I remember having h-bomb nightmares almost every night when I was eight or ten. Even now, just reading the Wikipedia description of Threads is enough to give me bad dreams, let alone reading a novel the centrepiece of which is an all too realistic description of what could’ve happened to Britain if the Cuban Missile Crisis had not been defused in time. I can only imagine what the intended young adult audience for The H-Bomb Girl will think of it, having grown up with very different nightmares.

So far Stephen Baxter had never impressed me with his writing. I’ve read and enjoyed several of his short stories scattered through various anthologies, but bounced hard of his awful Mammoth novels while the other work of his I’ve come across never appealed to me. The only reason I picked up The H-Bomb Girl in the library was because it got talked about over at Torque Control during the runup to the Clarke Awards. Reading the first few pages intrigued me enough to take it home. Once I started reading it in earnest today I got sucked in and didn’t stop until it was finished. There’s not many books that I do that with these days. Score one for Baxter.

Driftglass – Samuel R. Delany

Published on November 16, 2008

Cover of Driftglass

Driftglass
Samuel R. Delany
318 pages
published in 1971

Samuel Delany is one of my favourite science fiction writers and in my opinion one of the best science fiction writers ever. Considering the cover blurb on this collection of short stories, I’m not alone in that opinion. According to Frederick Pohl, not a bad writer himself, “Delany may be the only authentic genius among us”. High praise indeed, but Delany deserves it. Everything I’ve read of his, including his earliest novels, displayed a mastery of both language and story, a lively imagination and ability to create novel but believable world and most importantly a grasp of the importance of culture that’s rare in science fiction, especially when he first started writing.

He is however more of a novelist than a short story writer, having written not nearly as many short stories as his contemporaries. in fact, Delany debuted with a novel at a time when science fiction was still largely a magazine driven field. It was only after he had establishred himself as a writer that he started publishing some of his short stories. Driftglass was his first collection, containing work written between ’65 and ’68 and published between 1967 and 1970. It’s a great collection, with two absolute classics in it: the Nebula winning “Aye, and Gomorrah…” as well as “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones”, which won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. Not to mention several other excellent stories.

Tales — H. P. Lovecraft

Published on October 21, 2008

Cover of Tales

Tales
H. P. Lovecraft
838 pages
published in 2005

This deceptively slim volume, much slimmer than the similarly titled 1997 Jocye Carol Oates edited collection of Lovecraft stories, turned out to be printed on the kind of paper they use to print those teeny tiny complete bibles with. So what I thought would be a week’s worth of reading actually needed two long train journeys to finish, by the time I was somewhat bored with Lovecraft’s eldritch obsessions. After a while all the lurking horrors and dwellers in the darkness start to blur into each other and the descriptions turn from atmospheric into mildly ridiculous. Lovecraft is not a writer you should over indulge in; it’s better to read him sparingly story by story.

As a collection this is an impressive book, part of the prestigious Library of America series set up to safeguard America’s literary heritage. That H. P. Lovecraft, as first science fiction, horror or fantasy writer is allowed in these hallowed pages as a genre writer, not ust an established literary figure dabbling in these genres, is a good sign of how far these genres have penetrated literary consciousness. You may quibble about Lovecraft as a first choice, but he has slowly evolved from a cult writer into one appreciated as much for his literary qualities as his ability to scare his readers so he’s certainly not an undefensible choice.