books and books review – Page 88

Rivers in Time – Peter D. Ward

Published on March 25, 2008

Cover of Rivers in Time

Rivers in Time
Peter D. Ward
315 pages including index
published in 2000

Rivers of Time is a new edition of The End of Evolution, a book originally published in 1994, roughly around the same time as E. O. Wilson’s Diversity of Life, with which it overlaps to some point. Like that book, Rivers of Time mixes exploration of the Earth’s evolutionary past with concern for the
present, focussing on the historical three mega extinctions as well as the one currently under way. Unlike E. O. Wilson’s book however, this is not a call to arms. Ward is much more resigned to the great extinction than Wilson is.

Partially this may be because in Ward’s view, this great extinction has already happened, with the disappearance of the megafauna of Europe, North America, Australia and many parts of Asia and Africa during the last 15,000-20,000 years, coinciding with the rise of modern humanity. The extinctions still taking place now are just the aftermath of this. I’m not sure how much I agree with this, but at the very least it puts the current destruction of ecosystems in place like Brazil or Borneo into a new perspective, when you realise the same thing had already happened in Europe thousands of years ago.

Vellum – Hal Duncan

Published on March 24, 2008

Cover of Vellum

Vellum
Hal Duncan
501 pages
published in 2005

It’s rare that you get to read a book about which you can genuinely say that you’ll either love it or hate it. Usually this phrase is just hype, an attempt to make a book seem more controversial than it really is. Most books just bimble along without evoking either great hatred or great love in their readers. Vellum however is not such a book. It is genuinely a book you’ll love or loathe becauses, depending on your feelings, it’s either an incredibly stylish tour de force remaking of the fantasy novel, or self indulgent bloated nonsense, with glitzy prose masking a story devoid of any meaning. Myself, I can find some sympathy for both readings.

Hal Duncan is a new author; Vellum his first published novel. He seems to fit in loosely with that generation of fantasy writers that includes China Miéville, Justina Robson, Jeff VanderMeer and Susanna Clarke. I must admit he only appeared on my radar last year, when his
name cropped up on various science fiction blogs, which is why when I saw this book in the library I took a gamble on it. A gamble that paid off, fortunately. Vellum is an ambitious book, both in the story it tells as in how it tells it, that almost manages to fulfill its ambitions.

The Prize in the Game – Jo Walton

Published on March 21, 2008

Cover of The Prize in the Game

The Prize in the Game
Jo Walton
341 pages
published in 2002

I’ve known Jo Walton a long time, from before she became a succesful novelist, when she was “just” one of the most interesting posters in various Usenet groups like rec.arts.sf.written and Rec.arts.sf.fandom. You could therefore say I wanted this novel to be good. Fortunately, having read one of her earlier novels, The King’s Peace, I knew it was very likely going to be. And I was right.

Which reminds me that The Prize in the Game is actually set in the same world as The King’s Peace and functions as a sort of prequel to it, showing the background story of some of the secondary characters. You don’t need to have read it to enjoy The Prize in the Game however; it completely stands on its own. The quickest way to describe The Prize in the Game is as a coming of age novel set in a fantasy version of Celtic Ireland, in which some of the viewpoint characters may not actually come of age. Be careful though to assume too much from this; the island of Tir Isarnagiri differs from the real or even mythological Ireland in important ways. No leprechauns here.

Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut

Published on March 18, 2008

Cover of Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
215 pages
published in 1969

Back in the days when I read every book in the local library which had that little squiggle on it that meant it was science fiction, I read and reread a hell of a lot of Vonnegut. Books like Breakfast for Champions,God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slapstick and of course Slaughterhouse-Five. At the time I read them without any consideration of their literary status, but simply because Vonnegut was a science fiction author and I read science fiction, even if much of the Vonnegut novels I read weren’t quite science fiction. I liked them for their cynical black humour and inventive, seemingly slapdash plots.

Rereading Slaughterhouse-Five some twenty years later it’s easy to see why it made such an impression as a work of literature and why it’s so popular with generations of English students. It’s chock full of the sort of symbolism that makes it an easy book to dissect in a student essay. However, that also makes it hard to write about now, almost forty years after its first publication, because so much has been written about it already. I don’t want to write a review that comes over as yet another student paper.

The Battle of Venezuela – Michael McCaughan

Published on March 10, 2008

Cover of The Battle of Venezuela

The Battle of Venezuela
Michael McCaughan
166 pages
published in 2004

If there’s any subject where the failure of the western news media to fulfil its supposed function of objectively informing its audience is completely uncontroversial, it should be Venezuela. This was especially apparant during the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez, when leading western newspapers like The New York Times portrayed it as a democratic uprising against a dictator. It ignored the fact that while Chavez had been democratically elected and had made no attempt to suppress political opposition against his government, the coupists immediately suspended the constitution, started imprisoning Chavez supporters and in generally behave like the traditional juntas off Latin America. Even after the coup failed the agitation against Chavez in western media continued, again portraying him as a dictator and a lunatic for withdrawing the broadcasting licence of a television station heavily involved in the coup. In short, it’s impossible to get an objective view of Venezuela from
the mainstream media.

And while there are alternative news sources that attempt to correct the skewed portrayal of the country, but I’ve found for myself that these are not enough to get the whole picture if like me you don’t speak Spanish. Which is why The Battle of Venezuela was such an excellent find, as here you have a short to the point history of Venezuela and the Boliverian revolution, written by a “proper journalist” with no axe to grind against Chavez. At this length (only 166 pages in the edition I read) you can’t expect an in-depth analysis, but as a general introduction it would be hard to beat.