Review Number 400 Poll

It took a bit longer than expected but Random Comments is approaching its 400th reviewed work. Right now the count is 392, at this pace number 400 should be ready more or less around the blog's 5th anniversary. As usual you get to decide what number 400 will be. Since Lana has been contributing reviews recently, we've decided to make this one a joint review, so you get two opinions for the price of one. We've selected a number of books on which we are likely to disagree to make things interesting.

Your choices are:

Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

In the near future, disease will be a condition of the past. Most genetic defects will be removed at birth; the remaining during infancy. Unfortunately, there will be a generation left behind. For members of that missed generation, small advances will be made. Through various programs, they will be taught to get along in the world despite their differences. They will be made active and contributing members of society. But they will never be normal.

Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson

A stark and inhospitable place, its landscape poses a challenge to survival; yet its strange, silent beauty has long fascinated scientists and adventurers. Now Antarctica faces an uncertain future. The international treaty that protects the continent is about to dissolve, clearing the way for Antarctica's resources and eerie beauty to be plundered. As politicians and corporations move to determine its fate from half a world away, radical environmentalists carry out a covert campaign of sabotage to reclaim the land. The winner of this critical battle will determine the future for this last great wilderness....

Carrie by Stephen King

Stephen King's legendary debut novel about a teenage outcast and the revenge she enacts on her classmates.

Carrie White may have been unfashionable and unpopular, but she had a gift. Carrie could make things move by concentrating on them. A candle would fall. A door would lock. This was her power and her sin. Then, an act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious taunts of her classmates, offered Carrie a chance to be normal and go to her senior prom. But another act--of ferocious cruelty--turned her gift into a weapon of horror and destruction that her classmates would never forget

Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold

Artemis Awakening is the start of a new series by New York Times bestseller Jane Lindskold. The distant world Artemis is a pleasure planet created out of bare rock by a technologically advanced human empire that provided its richest citizens with a veritable Eden to play in. All tech was concealed and the animals (and the humans brought to live there) were bioengineered to help the guests enjoy their stay…but there was always the possibility of danger so that visitors could brag that they had “bested” the environment.

The Empire was shattered in a horrific war; centuries later humanity has lost much of the advanced technology and Artemis is a fable told to children. Until young archeologist Griffin Dane finds intriguing hints that send him on a quest to find the lost world. Stranded on Artemis after crashing his ship, he encounters the Huntress Adara and her psych-linked companion, the puma Sand Shadow. Their journey with her will lead Dane to discover the planet’s secrets…and perhaps provide a key to give unimagined power back to mankind.

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

Lyra Belacqua is content to run wild among the scholars of Jodan college, with her daemon familiar always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle-a struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armored bears. And as she hurtles toward danger in the cold far North, Lyra never suspects the shocking truth: she alone is destined to win, or to lose, this more-than-mortal battle. Philip Pullman's award-winning The Golden Compass is a masterwork of storytelling and suspense, critically acclaimed and hailed as a modern fantasy classic.

The poll is located in the bar on the right side of the screen. Since it will take a bit of time for both of us to read the novel, I'll let it run for 10 days. Take your pick!

They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass - Alaya Dawn Johnson

I haven't done enough reading recently to finish the collection I wanted to review last weekend. It will have to wait until next Sunday I'm afraid. The blog needs content however, so I decided to read some more short fiction that made the Nebula ballot this year. They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass by Alaya Dawn Johnson was nominated in the novelette category. The Nebula went to Aliette de Bodard's The Waiting Stars. They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass was first published in the January 2013 edition of Asimov's. Johnson has published five novels to date, with a sixth, Love is the Drug, expected later this year. I haven't read any of her work though. Judging from this story, maybe I should.

They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass takes us to a post-apocalyptic US. It is unclear what happened but a race of technologically superior aliens set about changing the face of the Earth. The remaining population lives in poverty, often lacking food and medical supplies. When Libby's sister Triss finds herself with child, she is desperate. The community is on the brink of starvation and there is no doctor or midwife who can help with the birth. Triss feels her only option is to find someone who can safely do an abortion, something the aliens refuse to allow. A dangerous trip for Libby and Triss is about to start.

This story is one of those pieces that doesn't really fit into a novelette. You constantly wish the author would explore the setting further. The way the apocalypse comes about remains unclear, the motivation of the aliens is completely unknown, the description of the way these people survive on the remains of a former civilization just scratches the surface of their ordeal. In short, there is more than enough material here for a longer work and that may frustrate some readers.

Johnson chooses to focus on the story of the two sisters. She aims for an emotionally powerful piece and in that respect the story definitely succeeds. Desperation is tangible and fear of the aliens influences every decision. On top of the extraordinary situation they are in, Triss and Libby also have to deal with the regular disapproval and rejection women opting for an abortion have to face. Johnson doesn't stress this point too much but it is clearly present throughout the story.

Triss has chosen not to attach herself to one particular man and with her decision not to keep the baby, she is forced to tiptoe around her own community to avoid offending anyone. A community that would support her if she has a baby they can't feed, would drop her like a hot potato if she decides not to have it. Johnson puts it in a science fiction setting but it is a problem many women face in places where abortion is illegal or controversial. She does add a twist to this story to make the sisters' position less clear cut. The aliens essentially use the carrot and the stick tactics. They are not above using retaliatory strikes if someone ignores their rules. If Triss is caught, her community will suffer. On the other hand they do offer help to the expecting mother. Johnson does raise a bit of doubt about whether or not Triss' options are limited to an abortion or see her child die young. Just a little bit mind you. With their motivations so carefully hidden but the destruction they cause plainly visible, it is not a very tempting alternative.

How much the reader will enjoy this story depends on whether or not you can deal with the number of questions the author leaves you with. They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass  is, in a way, very open-ended and the setting is only minimally developed. Personally, I can't shake the feeling that there is a much longer piece hiding in this story, that would potentially be more rewarding. That being said, it is a beautifully crafted story. Johnson seems to have chosen very consciously what to reveal to the reader to keep us focused on the main characters' story. It's an approach she has executed very well. On the whole, I think I would have preferred a bit more detail though.

Book Details
Title: They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass
Author: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Pages: 17
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: E-book
First published: 2013

Lana Reviews: Remnant Population - Elizabeth Moon

Having read the Paksenarrion trilogy and the four first books in Paladin's Legacy, I was already somewhat acquainted with Elizabeth Moon's writing, and as far as her works of Fantasy go, I really enjoy her books. So when I picked up Remnant Population for my reading challenge, I was quite excited to finally try something of hers in a different genre. Released in 1996, this book was nominated for the Hugo Award for best novel the year after, which eventually went to Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Ofelia Falfurrias was one of the original colonists of Colony 3245.12, arriving with her family to settle on the planet that would be their home for the next 40 years. During those years, her husband and all but one child died as did many of the other colonists, their death rate forever matching or exceeding their birth rate. When we enter the story, the authorities have revoked the Sims Bancorp's franchise to run the colony as it is considered a failure, and they have no choice but to disband it. As for the colonists themselves, they are to be forcibly shipped off in cryo-sleep to wherever the company feels like sending them. When Ofelia finds out that her family will be deducted for the cost of moving her from one place to another as she is considered too old to be of any further use for the Company, she decides to stay behind. There is a good chance her age will cause her to die while in cryo-sleep anyway, so why not spend what is left of her life where she buried her children and her husband?

On the day of departure, she hides away in the forest until she considers it to be safe to return to the village knowing that with their deadlines, the Company will not waste much time looking for one elderly colonist. At this point, she starts a fairly different existence to the one she has been forced into for so many years. Finally, she is free to play and to do what she herself wants to without fear of censure from the rest of the community, a freedom she hasn't had since she was a little girl. In spite of the work she has to do to stay alive, she is quite happy with her situation, when one day, a second group of colonists arrives, intending to settle somewhere to the north. As she listens to them, she unexpectedly becomes a witness to them being slaughtered by what cannot be anything other than sentient beings. For the first time since she herself arrived on this planet 40 years earlier, she realizes that the colonists were never alone.

It never ceases to amaze me how, no matter what kind of technology we as humans acquire or what kind of amazing things we can do, in most science fiction novels I have read describing all these wonderful things, the genders keep behaving as if they were still stuck in the Victorian era of our world, or worse. One would think that after having figured out how to move people across the universe, and how to colonize on worlds with ecologies not suited to support human beings and so on, there would be some improvement in the social spheres of life too, but no such luck. Among the colonists of Colony 3245.12, while men and women are taught to do the same jobs, it is considered the right way of things that the men should control the women, and the adults should control the children. Using violence to achieve either of these two, seems to be commonly accepted. When they are offered another way to look at things, they also respond with violence. Of course, it should be noted that the Company chose for their colonists to be uneducated people, set in certain ways and traditions, yet easy to form into what they needed and without too many ideas of their own. That, along with the placement of the colony itself, was most likely a factor that helped doom it to fail from the start.

I do like, however, how Moon hits right on the head how we as a society tend to treat our old people, in this novel illustrated in part by how an old woman is thought of no further value once she is past her child-bearing years. Where we should perhaps have cherished and honored them for their knowledge and their years of experience, we tend to write old people off as useless, someone who only takes up time and space; a bother. As the story unfolds, Moon shows us how things could have been had we considered their value differently, and appreciated them for what they were, and made use of their experience. And then she reminds us again, quite firmly, that this is just not the way of most human beings.

What I liked best about Remnant Population is how most of the story is told from the point of view of an old woman. She is often thinking about her aches, she is often grumpy, and she is completely aware of the fact that she does not know everything - although sometimes her general life experience makes her more knowledgeable than she gives herself credit for. She is an unlikely heroine, I think; I know I was surprised when I found out that the story would revolve around her, and not someone younger, or of a different gender - or both! Considering that that is what I have been served in most of the science fiction I've read till now, this was actually a nice surprise.

As a linguist, I guess I should also mention that once first contact is made between Ofelia and the unknown beings inhabiting the planet, it is fascinating to see how they go about trying to communicate with each other. Especially with their starting points being so completely different from each other and, at first glance, with no apparent common ground from which to get started.

All in all I really enjoyed this book, despite my general annoyance with sexism in science fiction. I guess it is not a overly exciting story as such, as a lot of the descriptions are of the daily toils of the main character; mundane tasks such as weeding the kitchen garden, fixing the houses, knitting, painting and cooking, and so on. Still, I kept wanting to go on to see what would happen next, especially once the unknown beings were introduced to the storyline, and I was never bored. It does not seem to matter that much to me whether Moon writes fantasy or science fiction, I seem to enjoy the results regardless.

Book Details
Title: Remnant Population
Author: Elizabeth Moon
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pages: 325
Year: 2003
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-345-46219-0
First published: 1996

Hydrhaga - Kim ten Tusscher

Like in the English language world, Fantasy is a bit of a niche market in the Netherlands. The Dutch language market, with some 23 million first language speakers, is nowhere near large enough to support full time Fantasy writers. As a result, very few works of Fantasy originally written in Dutch are published in what would be considered a professional fashion in the English language world. The obvious answer for authors with ambitions of making a living as a writer is to get their works translated, with the English language as the big prize. Unfortunately that market isn't very open to translations. With so many native speakers clamouring for attention, shouldering the additional cost of a translation simply isn't worth the effort for a book that is not certain to sell. So what do you do to get a foot in the door? Have the translation done yourself. Thomas Olde Heuvelt has recently tried this approach and it has gotten him two spots on the Hugo Award shortlist. For some, it may be worth trying.

Getting a Fantasy novel in Dutch published is not impossible however. In the area between self publishing and traditional publishing quite a lot is happening in the Netherlands. One of the publishers operating in this area is Uitgeverij Zilverspoor. They have an editorial process, art direction and a nice website but with print runs more likely to be in the hundreds than thousands and a persistent lack of their books showing up in the brick and mortar book stores, it is unlikely any of the people involved are actually making a living this way. That doesn't seem to dampen their ambition though. Recently they launched a new imprint, Alter Ego Press, which publishes English language books. So far the number of titles is limited but I think it is an initiative worth watching.

One of the authors who had her books translated is Kim ten Tusscher. Her Dutch bibliography currently contains five novels, two of which have been translated into English. The author kindly provided me with review copies of the English language editions. The first one is Hydrhaga, a standalone Fantasy first published in Dutch in 2008. The translation was done by Judit Coppens, a name I haven't come across before. To get a feel for the translation I also read the fourteen page sample of the Dutch edition of Hydrhaga provided on the author's website. It looks like this new English edition also included a bit of rewriting. It is not a one on one translation of the text on Ten Tusscher's website. From what I can tell the translation has been done by someone with a knowledge of the English language that far exceeds mine. The prose is not stunning but it does do justice to Ten Tusscher's writing.

The story's main character is a young woman by the name of Lumea (moon symbolism is a motif in this novel) on a journey towards the mysterious city of Hydrhaga. Drawn by the promise of a carefree life, freed of the traditional role her society is trying to force her into, Lumea arrives in the city of Omnesia (which indeed seems to have forgotten part of its history). Nobody is willing to help her get to her final destination however, until she meets the mysterious Elion. Together they manage to find her destination, but things turn out to be quite different from what Lumea imagined. The city hides a secret that will quickly turn Lumea's hopes and dreams sour.

In this novel, Ten Tusscher is looking for the strong female lead that seems to defy so many authors in epic fantasy. In a way she finds her too. Lumea grows throughout the novel. She is barely mature and somewhat naive early on in the novel, but gains confidence and maturity as the story progresses. She is, all things considered, an interesting character. What I did have issues with, is the fact that her motivations mostly revealed to the reader long after her actions. The reason why Lumea left home for instance, doesn't come up until the halfway point of the novel and even then it is only partly explained. How she managed to convince her parents to let their barely adult daughter go on a journey to a far away city that doesn't appear on any map on her own, is almost entirely glossed over.

What bothered me most about Lumea is the apparent contradiction between her adherence to the traditional religious beliefs of her people, her sadness at the disappearance of traditional cultural values,  and resistance to being placed in the traditional role of women in her culture. What her culture deems to be her place in society may not stem from its religion but usually these things are interlinked. On the one hand she is one of the few of her generation who sticks to the bond with the land and the connection to nature, on the other, she is something of a revolutionary. Not that these two things are mutually exclusive but Ten Tusscher doesn't manage to unify them in Lumea. Too often she swings from conservative to liberal views or from a pacifist attitude to determined to swing a sword. At times it made me feel that Lumea's character development was driven by the needs of the plot, rather than an attempt by the author to create a complex character.

The worldbuilding is in Hydrhaga is curious as well. It presents the reader with a strange mix of technological development. On the one hand there are airships and submarines, but riding on horseback is still the way to get around on land. Force fields and robotics have been developed but gunpowder or any other form of explosives are absent and fighting is done with swords. It is as if the novel can't quite decide whether it wants to be pseudo-medieval fantasy, steampunk or something else entirely. A clear sense of what is technically possible or an explanation for some strange omissions is lacking. In terms of worldbuilding, the novel is messy.

After finishing the novel I didn't feel like I had read a book that is going to storm the bestsellers lists. Hydrhaga feels like a very organically written piece. The need to find out what comes next and to get to the end of the story overshadow the structure of the tale and the consistency of the world and its characters. Especially later on in the book there is a sense of urgency in the writing that will make the reader want to keep going until the final page is turned. Readers looking for this kind of tale could do worse than pick up this novel. For the more reflective reader, Hydrhaga is less successful. The more reflective reader will see the cracks in this novel however. There is no doubt about the enthusiasm Ten Tusscher shows for writing and the Fantasy genre in particular, but there is some room for improvement in terms of structure, plotting and characterization. I'll be looking at her second novel, Bound in Darkness, in a few weeks time. It'll be interesting to see how she develops.

Book Details
Title: Hydrhaga
Author: Kim ten Tusscher
Publisher: Alter Ego Press
Pages: 206
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-94-907-6737-2
First published: 2008

Wolves - Simon Ings

I received a copy of this novel through Worlds Without Ends some time ago. It must have taken quite an interesting route because it took no less than two and a half months to get here. I had already given up on it when it arrived in the mailbox. When it did, it had to wait another month for me to get around to reading it so we're quite a bit past the publication date (January 2014) by now. Wolves is the first novel by Ings I've read. I must admit that, until being offered this copy, I'd never heard of the man. He is not exactly unknown in British science fiction though. Wolves is his eighth novel and there are quite a few pieces of short fiction out there as well.

Wolves is a near future science fiction in which Augmented Reality plays an important part. Think glasses or contacts that make you see more than your eyes would. The real world overlaid by whatever the programmer chooses to show you. The main character, Conrad, is working for a company trying to develop the technique. His friend Michel looks at the world differently. Convinced that the economy is going to collapse in his lifetime he prepares for the end. He even makes a lucrative career out of it by writing post-apocalyptic novels. When a financial backer appears that wants to combine the two into a new form of entertainment, their professional lives as well as their personal ones become intertwined. Things get even more interesting when his job leads Conrad to a clue about his mother's death many years ago.

During the first half of the novel I was frequently tempted to put the book down. Augmented reality plays an important part in this book and Ings has created a main character completely immersed in this life. It is as if he's always one step removed from reality. We get to see the entire story through his eyes so it comes across as if looking at things from a distance. It becomes impersonal, filtered. Even the girlfriend he has at the opening of the book can't really touch him since her hands were lost in an accident and replaced by artificial ones. His life is dreary in the extreme. In later stages of the novel it gets so bad Conrad longs for unaugmented reality. To be able to look into someones eyes and not see a contact hiding the depths of their souls.

It doesn't help that Conrad is not really a nice fellow. He has the annoying tendency to think of people as selfish, vain and desperate, always managing to ascribe the most negative motivations to people around him. It often makes him behave like an asshole. Quite frankly, I don't understand why he didn't jump off a bridge long before we reach the final part of the novel. Especially in the early chapters of the novel, he is utterly pathetic. The picture painted of Conrad is that of a boy from a dysfunctional family, growing up to be a man who can't seem to find happiness in life. The one thing that probably saves him is the fact that he accepts the dreadful things that happen to him with a scary kind of fatalism. He is not a character the reader will easily connect with.

The final part of the novel is quite a different creature from the opening pages however. For some reason Ings doesn't introduce the mysterious death of Conrad's mother until quite late in the novel, making the first part appear a bit aimless. His mother suffers from manic depression and it is no surprise to him that she dies when Conrad is still a teenager. It's one of the parts of the book the reader feels the resignation that plagues Conrad most clearly. He is upset over a lot of things that happen back then, but not the actual death of his mother. While augmented reality plays a part in this novel as well, his father experiments with it to provide sight for blinded servicemen, these memories are the most clear look we get into his mind. I still felt removed from Conrad though, like even in his memories, he is the spectator in someone else's script. He employs this effect in the sections about Conrad's work and achievements in later life but this bit left me wondering how much of it is actually Conrad's outlook on life rather than technology messing with his perceptions.

I felt the early part of the novel was a bit aimless, but it has to be said that Ings pulls the strands of the story together nicely in the final few chapters. With the floodwaters rushing in (given what happened in the UK this winter Ings' timing is impeccable) and the economy collapsing, we return to the physical reality of the world and the characters deepest motivations. Strip away all the technology and you'll still find basic human emotions underneath. It's an odd sort of collapse. Suddenly it is upon the reader without much in the way of reflections on what went wrong. The characters saw it coming a long while before it actually happened so there is no sense of surprise or desperation. In a sense, Conrad is once again living out a script someone else wrote. That of his friend Michel.

Wolves is a bit of an odd novel. It contains elements of a techno-thriller, murder mystery and apocalyptic tale without actually being any of those three. Even several days after finishing it I'm not quite sure what to make of it. The last part of the novel, where I started to get a sense of where things were going, was quite a good reading but if I hadn't promised someone I'd review it, I'm not sure I'd have made it that far. I guess it is a novel that requires a bit of patience and some reflection because after mulling over it for a couple of days, I do think it is a decent read. Maybe not giving into the urge to put a novel down is not such a bad thing once in a while.

Book Details
Title: Wolves
Author: Simon Ings
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 295
Year: 2014
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-11973-4
First published: 2014

The Weight of the Sunrise - Vylar Kaftan

Vylar Kaftan's The Weight of the Sunrise recently won the Nebula Award in the novella category. Of all the nominated works in the three short fiction categories I've only read Aliette de Bodard's The Waiting Stars (winner in the novelette category). Most years I manage to do a bit better. As usual many of the stories have been made available online so last week I decided to give Kaftan's story a go  (it can be read here). It was first published in the February issue of Asimov's. As far as I know there are no other publications yet. It's the first story by this author I've read. Her website tells me there has been a steady stream of short fiction since her first publication in 2004 but no collections or novels yet. Quite a lot of it is available to read online. I may have to have a look at some of it later this year.

The Weight of the Sunrise is an alternative history, set in a world where Pizzaro's men got butchered by an overwhelmingly large Inca army. The Inca state never collapsed, and although it suffered greatly from epidemics of old world diseases, it has managed to stay independent. The story is related by Lanchi Ronpa, an old man, telling his grandson about the events in the year 1806, when a diplomat from the British North American colonies comes to offer a vaccine for the smallpox. For a considerable price.

I'm very impressed with the way Kaftan created her alternative history. The author obviously put in a lot of thought on how an empire could survive the onslaught of new diseases, a serious drop in population and the pressure of the colonial powers that, despite Pizzaro's defeat, must have been present. Although the main character doesn't seem to know much of what goes on outside the borders of the empire, what we do catch, suggests that the changes are not limited to South America. As with any good alternative history, I wish the scope of the story had been larger so we'd get to see more of this timeline. Maybe Kaftan will return to it in other works. There certainly seems more than enough material for further exploration.

The social structure of this nineteenth century Inca state is explored in a bit more detail. Especially the way religion and politics are interwoven is explored in detail. Lanchi is afraid to be caught up in this political game he doesn't know how to play. His responses to practices like human sacrifice and slavery are interesting in particular. He is a product of his culture and tells his story according to his values.

The young main character may not know much about the world, but the much older narrator does. It's a clever bit of story telling, allowing the author to work in a bit of pride and false modesty, as well as courage and love for his family and a strong sense of justice. Throughout the story you get the impression he presents himself as a bit more naive than he really is. He is, in other words, a classic example of the unreliable narrator.

What will make or break this story for the reader is how much you are willing to forgive Lanchi for glossing over the flaws of his own society. The Inca seem a bit too benevolent to be believed. It is of course impossible to tell how their society would have developed in the two-and-a-half centuries that separate the fall of the historical empire and the events in this tale. Or, for that matter, how true the accounts of the Spanish sources describing the Inca were. Some readers will find Kaftan's version implausible or too western. I think she can get away with this, as long as you are prepared not to trust Lanchi too much. It is a piece that will most likely be good for some debate though. Which in itself is not a bad thing for a story.

I haven't read any of the other nominees so I can't really say if it was a deserved win. I do understand why this story was nominated though. The alternative time line is fascinating in my opinion. It is the aspect that carries this story really. I was done with Lanchi's tale when I had reached the end of his tale but the world itself left me hungry for more. If alternative history has your interest this is definitely a story you should read.

Book Details
Title: The Weight of the Sunrise
Author: Vylar Kaftan
Pages: 31
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: E-book
First published: 2013

Lana Reviews: Dune - Frank Herbert

Dune by Frank Herbert was the sixth book I read for my reading challenge, and will be the third book that I review. I chose to read it because, although I did not know anything about Dune or its universe beforehand, I did know that it has been an important book for both science fiction and the fantasy genre. (Plus I hoped it would help me understand the Dune-related spice jokes that sometimes pop up on my Facebook feed.) When first picking it up, however, I got a bit worried as the first thing it tells me on its front cover is that the only thing Arthur C. Clarke knows that is comparable to it, is The Lord of the Rings. Don't get me wrong, - I quite enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, at least on my reread, but I always felt it was a relatively difficult read so thanks to this Clarke fellow I kind of expected Dune to be the same. It wasn't.

Young Paul Atreides is a member of a noble family who has just been offered the stewardship of the planet Arrakis - also known as Dune. As part of an interstellar feudal society where all noble houses owe their allegiance to the Padishah Emperor, his father, the Duke, has little choice but to accept the offer, fully aware that it is little more than a trap he and his family is walking into. Arriving at Arrakis, they find a desert planet where every drop of water is worth a fortune. But what makes the planet so valuable to the rest of the Galactic Empire, is that it is the only source of melange, the 'spice of spices.'

When the story begins, Paul is 15 years old and described as small for his age. Those who meet him first think of him as a child, only to discover as they interact with him, that he thinks, speaks and acts like a grown man. From his mother, Lady Jessica, he has received Bene Gesserit training giving him, among other things, heightened senses and knowledge of martial arts. He has also received training in how to use weapons from some of his father's trusted men, and in being a mentat - a human computer. When his family is betrayed on Dune, he and Jessica escape into the desert where they find shelter with the Freemen, the extremely hardy inhabitants of the planet. Being thought dead, the House of Atreides believed to be nothing more than a memory, gives Paul the opportunity to gather his forces and resources, and take back what is rightfully his.

For anyone familiar with the monomyth, (or the hero's journey,) it is quite obvious from the very first few pages of the book that the young boy Paul Atreides has a great destiny ahead of him. Even those unfamiliar with the above pattern are unlikely to miss Paul's own feelings of having a terrible purpose, feelings he has even before he receives the visions revealing what exactly that purpose will be. Like with most heroes written in this way, he doesn't have much of a choice in the matter, but rather has unfortunate circumstances forced upon him, changing his life from the normal to the unknown. Some heroes will survive the unknown thanks to powers they suddenly acquire at this point; Paul survives because of the years of training he has received when things could still be considered normal. For those that are familiar with the pattern of the hero's journey, Paul's story will most likely be extremely predictable, - I guess that would be true even for those who have simply read similar stories based on the same pattern, without knowing that there is such a pattern. It is okay though, it was how the author meant for it to be.

The future interstellar feudal society of Dune does not seem to have come very far when it comes to gender roles. The galaxy is, based on what we are told in this book, dominated by the male gender, and even the exclusively female Bene Gesserit, a religious group, want nothing more than to bring about a male Bene Gesserit among them; it has been their goal for thousands of years. The women that do not have any special powers, are hardly ever seen or mentioned, and seem to stick to the traditional female duties and roles in society. Those that have special powers, like the Bene Gesserit, are feared and hated, and often referred to as witches. In addition, it seems their powers are only meant to be used to serve the men around them. This is not really criticism though, more of an observation.

As I was reading Dune, I sometimes wondered what kind of reception it would have gotten had it been written and published now, and not back in 1965. How would the world today have reacted to a book where the hero adapts into a society of fighters that have Arab-sounding names, Arabic and Islamic terms in their language, and won't hesitate to spend their own lives if it means taking out their enemies along the way? And what about the immoral and corrupt enemy who will do anything to get their hands on the one valuable thing on the desert-planet that these fighters inhabit; the substance that makes space-travel/transportation possible? In a way, I wish I had read Dune when I was in my early or middle teens, so that my reading experience would not have been colored by what has happened in the real world in the last 15 years. I do not think it made me enjoy the story any less, but it did add thoughts and feelings to it that I do not think Herbert had ever intended.

I really liked Dune. For a science fiction story, it resembles my favorite genre (fantasy) a lot more than I thought it would. Keeping most of the focus on the story and the characters made it more enjoyable and available for me than science fiction that focuses more on science or technology. I also felt that it is an easier read than many other books because of the language itself. Sure, Herbert uses a lot of words that is not actually English, but there is a glossary in the back for that, and the rest of the story flows nicely enough. I would definitely recommend this, both for science fiction and fantasy fans.

Book Details
Title: Dune
Author: Frank Herbert
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 609
Year: 2007
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-575-08150-5
First published: 1965

Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie

Ancillary Justice, the debut novel of Ann Leckie, has been taking science fiction by storm. It is the first in a trilogy and has been drawing a lot of attention since it was published last year and is looking like a hot favourite to sweep the awards this season. It has already won the BSFA, Nebula and Clarke Awards and it is still in the race for the Campbell Award, the Locus Award for first novel and of course the Hugo. Ancillary Justice was also nominated for The Philip K. Dick Award but that one was awarded to Countdown City by Ben H. Winters. I'm probably overlooking a few other awards and nominations too. In short, a very impressive haul. I'm always a bit wary of books surrounded by this much hype but I decided to give it a go anyway as part of the 12 awards in 12 months reading challenge over at WWend.

The story is a far future science fiction, in which artificial intelligence, space travel and cloning techniques have advanced greatly. We meet our main character, Breq, on a remote planet, where, after a search that has taken almost two decades, revenge is within reach. On the last stretch of the journey Breq meets someone from her past. A time when service to the galaxy-spanning empire of the Radch meant controlling thousands of bodies and being reduced to a single one seemed impossible. Breq is determined to carry on with her plans but this meeting with her past complicates things considerably.

The novel contains a lot of elements that space opera in particular is rife with. Cloning, galactic empires, mysterious alien races and artificial intelligence is hardly new to science fiction. Leckie examines what it is to be human through alien intelligence, tackles empires and the morality of their drive to continually expand, and explores discrimination though the treatment of clones. I can think of dozens of books exploring this idea, quite a few of them doing a better job than Leckie is doing here. So far, there is nothing special about this novel.

What is probably the most inventive part of Ancillary Justice, the very thing that makes the book rake in five star reviews by the dozen,  is Leckie's treatment of gender. Breq used to be a spaceship controlling thousands of clones. It is never explicitly stated in the novel but one would assume both male and female bodies. Breq is referred to as she but cannot be considered to have a gender, or at least not one that is contained in the male/female spectrum. To make matters more complicated, Breq isn't usually sure whether she is dealing with men or women herself.She often resorts to guesses and throughout the novel most characters are referred to as she, although there is no indication of whether or not they actually are.

Breq herself comments on it once early on in the novel.

"I can't see under your clothes. And even if I could, that's not always a reliable indicator."

Chapter 7

Leckie's treatment of gender drives home how important gender is in our culture and language. The moment you're not sure, it poses all sorts of linguistic and cultural problems. Leckie doesn't feel the need to drive this particular point home but the reader can't help but wonder how complicated things can get for someone who doesn't fit neatly into either category. Leckie makes it hard on the reader to an extent, especially with the character of Seivarden, who is referred to as both he and she in the novel. The text can be confusing at times, it demands that the reader pays attention to the scene as in some parts of the novel personal pronouns can't be relied on convey to whom the narrator is referring. In other parts of the novel the author simply defaults to she to avoid making things too complicated. The result for me, and I think hat was what Leckie was aiming for, is that for the most part, I didn't assign genders to the characters at all.

The second element that drew my attention in the novel is the concept of ancillaries. Breq is what is left of a starship called Justice of Toren. She is used to controlling both the ship and thousands of clones, or ancillaries as they are referred to in the book. These bodies are not considered human and are easily replaced. Breq ending up in one means she is caught in a situation where she is forced to consider herself an individual rather than the tool the body she inhabits used to be. I'm not entirely sure Leckie makes the most of it. With the loss of her Ancillaries and primary body the starship, Breq has lost not only part of her body but also a large part of her sensory input, memory and intelligence. She knows this but by the time we meet her, she is so used to it that we hardly see her struggle to adjust. That would have been an interesting challenge for the character, something that is fundamental in shaping the creature we meet as Breq. Instead, Leckie chooses to focus on her feelings of guilt over the events that resulted in the destruction of the largest part of her, which I suppose, is more important to the plot.

Where Breq looses her bodies, the ruler of the Radch struggles with the opposite problem. She (or he) is an entity made up of thousands of bodies. It isn't revealed if the Radch is in fact human in origin or an artificial intelligence but she does control thousands of bodies spread out over the empire to govern. It seems like an ideal solution, to be everywhere at once and keep an eye on everything would probably be the wet dream of every tyrant, but what if the various parts of this entity don't agree with each other? There is a certain weakness in this story line. It is never explained how a single mind can keep itself (him, her it, I'm confusing myself now) from knowing what the opinions of its various bodies are. I guess you could see it as something of a multiple personality disorder. Maybe the Radch is human in origin after all. It contrasts with Breq's struggle in interesting ways however, and makes me curious about what will happen when Breq manages to get to the core of Radch's personality.

Does that mean Ancillary Justice is deserving of the whole shelf of awards it is winning at the moment? I don't think so. It is an interesting debut, a Campbell (if she is still eligible) or Locus Award for first novel might even be in order, but I don't think it is good enough to really propel Leckie to science fiction stardom. A novel that leans so heavily on one single aspect to make it stand out in the crowd simply doesn't merit that kind of attention in my opinion. That being said, I did enjoy it quite a lot and I am curious about several dangling story lines I assume Leckie means to pick up in the next book. She is an author to keep an eye on for sure. The second volume is expected in October. I'll be keeping an eye out for it.

Book Details
Title: Ancillary Justice
Author: Ann Leckie
Publisher: Orbit
Pages: 386
Year: 2014
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-356-50240-3
First published: 2013

Sixty Days and Counting - Kim Stanley Robinson

Sixty Days and Counting is the final novel in Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital trilogy, a work that focuses on the impact of rapid climate change on a near future (when he wrote it, the novel is set right about now) earth. It is one of Robinson's most political books, not so much because of the ideas in it, he's discussed quite a few alternative economies in the Mars trilogy for instance, but because of how close to home it is. This novel is so left leaning by American standards that it will have many a conservative frothing at the mouth within a few chapters. For me it is not as radical as it may seem to others but I have a hard time seeing anything like this happening in the current US political climate.

Democrat Phil Chase, Charlie's boss, has been elected US president and a global response to climate change is high on his agenda. To show how urgent he thinks change is, he launches a slew of initiatives in the first sixty days of his presidency and keeps pushing on long after they have passed. Charlie, Frank and Anna are swept up in various parts of this campaign. The environmental crisis is not waiting for the world to get its act together however, evidence of irreversible changes and imminent system collapsed keep surfacing. A global approach is needed to keep the planet inhabitable in the long run.

Robinson is certainly not afraid to include some very controversial ideas in this novel. In the opening chapters Frank in particular is looking at alternative energy to replace the carbon based systems that currently power the US. The debate focuses on whether alternative sources like wind, time or solar energy are ready to take over, or whether additional nuclear plants will have to be built to cover the transition. He even points out the good (public) record of the US military when it comes to nuclear power. Personally I'm not convinced by this argument. There simply is no good solution for nuclear waste and the idea that we can keep it safe and controlled for the tens of thousands of years some of it needs to degrade doesn't strike me as very convincing. The events in Fukushima has recently made a lot of people jittery about nuclear power plants again but Robinson could no have known that. Interestingly enough, Frank does reach the conclusion that somehow harnessing the power of the sun is the only source that could possibly meet demand and still be sustainable.

Another interesting idea that some will fight tooth and nail, is the connection Chase makes between social justice and environmental degradation. Women's rights in particular, he points out, are linked to birth rate. With women in control over reproduction, the birthrate drops to about the replacement rate. Something that needs to happen to keep humanity from further overshooting the planet's carrying capacity. And this is but many of the social feedback loops that are related to environmental issues. Thus, Chase pursues a policy of technological and social change. In fact, he uses one as leverage to achieve the other. It is at the same time good to see the realization that a technical fix is not enough to solve the problem (Fifty Degrees Below is more focuses on technological fixes than this book) and vexing to see how Chase goes about it.

There is a sense in the novel that once the US has identified something as a problem that needs immediate action, things will get done. In fact they go so far as to strongarm various parties into compliance. It is an unbelievably arrogant position when you take into account that more progressive parties tried to make a start with the reduction of greenhouse gas emission in the early 1990s through the Kyoto protocol. Their targets were of course laughably modest but it was a beginning. The US never had the intention of actually ratifying it. It wasn't alone in this position but to suddenly put yourself forward as environmental champion is not very likely to be taken seriously by the rest of the world. In fact, without the string of natural disasters that Robinson puts in the book, I very much doubt even the strongarm tactics of the US would have been successful. It is probably an accurate portrayal of the attitude in the US political system but annoying nonetheless.

A third interesting aspect of the situation Robinson describes is the fact that permanent change is considered inevitable. The situation at the South Pole in particular is considered to have passed the point of no return. Interestingly enough, reports have recently started appearing that saome scientists consider a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet inevitable. Robinson portrays this event in a bit more dramatic way but some of it may come to pass in the not too distant future.

Chase has developed a strategy of adaptation and mitigation to deal with it and to he does not shy away from huge projects to weather the crisis. The restarting for the oceanic conveyor belt described in the previous book is small compared to what is proposed in this novel. The uncontrolled release of genetically modified lichen (a Russian project out of Chase's control), filling up desert basins to create huge salt water lakes and pumping water from the ocean back up the Antarctic plateau are the most eye-catching ones. It's terraforming on the scale described in the Mars novels only this time applied to earth. The sheer magnitude of the changes and the impossibility of predicting their effect with any kind of accuracy made me even more sympathetic to Ann Clayborne's Red position in those novels. Of course, on Earth we may not have the luxury of a choice. It makes you wonder what a world in which decisive action was taken earlier would look like.

Change is obvious in the lives of the main characters too. Frank reaches the conclusion that a blow to the head in the previous book has impaired the workings of his brain and he decides to have an operation to have it fixed. In the mean time he also has to deal with the relationship he started with Caroline and his desire to go back to California. He has quite a bit on his plate in this novel, it is a miracle he has time left for work. His alternative lifestyle has moved to the background a bit in favour of the spy storyline. Robinson seems to get the timing right for this one. The absurd tangle of US intelligence agencies is starting to unravel in this novel, when the president realizes how much of a mess it is. Where Chase's election has a lot in common with the election of Obama in 2008, the latter seems much more reluctant to do something about the gross abuse of power and lack of democratic control over these agencies.

Charlie in the mean time, is faced with another tough decision. With his boss in the White House, he is forced to choose between giving up his job or going back into the office and put his son Joe in daycare. He would rather wrok from home until Joe is old enough to go to school but when the president insists, he agrees to try. He can't stop worrying about Joe though. His wife Anna is faced with another dilemma. She is offered a position in the advisory team of the president. She prefers to stay at NSF however, taking pure science over a mix of science and politics. With a stay at home dad and a mother with a head for numbers and math, Joe's parents make a statement about the traditional role pattern between men and women. It is in fact the same one that returns over and over again in the novel. We can change things if we want to.

Sixty Days and Counting is the most optimistic of the three in a way, but reading it didn't make me share Robinson's optimism. In the book things get done. Despite my annoyance with the way the American political system believing the universe revolves around them (really, in that respect they can teach Wall Street a lesson) you get the sense that the characters in this novel will not let the world cook itself. We have now arrived more or less at the point in time where this novel is set, and if I look around, I still see an outrageous level of denial about the state of the planet and how much trouble we are really in. Robinson is right, we can change things if we want to. But apparently we don't. There is a good chance we'll see another El Niño event this year and some predictions indicate it will be a strong one. Let's hope it won't be the hyperniño described in Forty Signs of Rain. I'm beginning to wonder if in the end, that is what it will take to wake people up. I'd much prefer it if people read these books, thought about it, and not let it come to that.

Book Details
Title: Sixty Days and Counting
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Bantam Books
Pages: 388
Year: 2007
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-553-80313-6
First published: 2007

Wolf's Brother - Meghan Lindholm

Wolf's Brother is the second half of Lindholm's prehistoric story about the Reindeer people. Lindholm had originally envisioned it as one book but because of its length the publisher decided to split the book. I reread the first half, The Reindeer People, in March and decided not to wait too long to complete this reread. This novel is the last of Lindholm's (under this pen name) I can review. I'm missing the long out of print Cloven Hooves but don't hold your breath for that one. I refuse to pay an arm and a leg for a battered paperback so it might be a while before I can get my hands on it.

As is to be expected with a duology that is really one book, the story picks up right after events in the first novel. Tillu has been offered to join the Reindeer people as their healer,  and with spring approaching, she has to decide quickly. Soon the herds will be moving north across the tundra to avoid the insects that can cause disease among the reindeer. With Carp's arrival and Kerlew's ever growing powers, it is not an easy decision. Then again, life on her own is not without its dangers either. Tillu moves with the Reindeer people and tries to find her place in their society. This proves to be far from easy.

In this novel Tillu really moves among the Reindeer people, giving the reader a greater insight into their everyday life. Summer is a season of intense activity for them. The herd needs to be moved, a gathering with other groups is planned, food has to be gathered, all while the short summer lasts. The feeling that the Reindeer people are in serious trouble permeates the entire novel. Murders unsolved, tensions between members of the group and a mysterious disease breaking out set the people on edge. Their leader is not up to the task of guiding them through these troubles and those who feel they can do a better job are not content to wait until he screws up by himself. The tensions within the group of people rise until a confrontation is inevitable.

I'm still quite impressed with the way Lindholm describes this lifestyle. The descriptions of the landscape, food, culture and everyday activities is very well done. It is always present, the reader gets enough detail to build a mental picture of what this lifestyle would look like. On the other hand it doesn't get in the way of the story. Where the novels she wrote as Robin Hobb tend to be fairly slow paced, her Lindholm works are usually much faster. This book is no exception. In fact, it is so briskly paced that I wondered at the decision to split it in the first place. The combined page count of my two paperbacks is about six hundred. It almost makes the last volume seem rushed.

Where Lindholm handles the setting very well, I was less impressed with the way the plot unfolds. There was tension among the Reindeer People already. Lacking a spiritual leader and suffering from poor worldly leadership, the tribe is adrift. Carp steps in to fill the gap. He does it in such a way that you'd have to be exceptionally stupid or superstitious to not want to kill the bastard within fifteen minutes after meeting him. Part of his tactic is a confidence game but he manages to make so many enemies along the way that it is a miracle the man has lived as long as he has.

He also has a tight grip on Tillu's son Kerlew throughout most of the novel. We get to see the story almost entirely though the eyes of Tillu however, so the depth of their relationship is never fully explored. We get a couple of brief snatches of his activities in this novel. Not really enough to make him into a well rounded character in my opinion. We never get to fully understand how he feels about his master for instance. His quest for a vision does give this book a bit more of a fantasy feel I suppose, but this is mostly used to solve a number of riddles the plot poses the reader that would be very hard to explain otherwise. Not the most elegant use of magic (if you want to call it that) in Lindholm's writing career.

Lindholm interweaves the trouble of the Reindeer People with another problem for Tillu. She is attracted to Heckram, one of the few men who will treat her son as a human being and agonizes over whether or not to give into desire, always afraid of having to move on again to protect Kerlew. This dilemma came up in the first book already but now Tillu has to face it. I thought it wasn't handled very well. Heckram, who in the first novel was stubborn and moody as well as considerate and competent, turns into an ideal husband in the later stages of the novel. He's not quite as bad as Jean M. Auel's Jondalar but it's close.

This reread was an interesting experience for me. I can't really remember disliking so many things about this novel. Wolf's Brother is still a decent read but the climax of the novel is so full of melodrama that it's hard to take it serious. Although endings do not appear to be Lindholm's, and most certainly not Hobb's, forte, I felt this one was probably the weakest she has delivered. My reaction to this novel caught me by surprise. The first book in this duology was more or less what I remembered it to be. This one isn't. I guess my taste has developed a bit in the past twelve or so years (or maybe a bit longer, the Dutch edition I read back then was published in 2000) since I last read them. It makes me wonder how some of the other stuff I read back then holds up. Still, if you like prehistoric fiction, you could do a lot worse than these two books. I enjoyed them in a way, just not as much as I did the first time around.

Book Details
Title: Wolf's Brother
Author: Megan Lindholm
Publisher: Voyager
Pages: 268
Year: 2011
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-00-742543-3
First published: 1988