Book Review: Armored, edited by John Joseph Adams

Armored is a new collection of stories from Baen Books edited by John Joseph Adams, all based around the idea of powered armor. The idea of powered exoskeletons as weapons of war is a venerable one in the science fiction genre, figuring prominently in books such as Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, and one of my personal favorite novels, John Steakly's Armor.

This collection contains 23 stories by authors including Alastair Reynolds, Jack McDevitt, Sean Williams, Tanya Huff, and Michael Stackpole, and Dan Abnett, plus a foreword by Orson Scott Card and an introduction by John Joseph Adams

I really like this collection. It's got lots of action, some interesting speculative ideas, a few lighthearted stories that are quite fun, and some effective emotional moments, including one of the more shudder-inducing climaxes I've encountered recently (No points for guessing that it's the Alastair Reynolds story.)

Many of the stories in Armored are in the military science fiction subgenre, naturally enough, such as “The Johnson Maneuver” by Ian Douglas, “Jungle Walkers” by David Klecha and Tobias Buckell, and “Contained Vacuum” by David Sherman. However, there's quite a variety of other genres represented as well, along with settings that range from extremely near-future Earth to more distant futures among the stars to fanciful alternate histories. Beyond the common element they all share, they're also enjoyably diverse in subject matter. Aside from the obvious subject of exploring the battlefield implications of powered armor, there's also quite a bit about relationships between humans and artificial intelligences, the blurring of man and machine, and the struggle for survival in alien and inhospitable environments, among other things.

Standout stories for me include:

“Death Reported of Last Surviving Veteran of Great War” by Dan Abnett- One of the shortest entries in the collection, told in first person by the eponymous veteran as he recounts his life. He gave up his chance for a normal life and much of his human body to become part of an elite corp of supersodliers physically merged with powered armor “shells”- only to rapidly become obsolete as the technology marched onward and then left cruelly diminished in both body and mind when his worn-out shell- including the electronic storage containing much of his memory of his years joined to the shell- had to be removed.

This story has an excellent premise, and Abnett uses it very well. The story's description of the pitilessly rapid obsolescence and irrelevance of men who had been at the apex of human capability and given up everything to achieve it is both powerful and quite plausible. The sense of loss and sadness is palpable, and made all the more poignant by the stoically matter-of-fact way the narrator tells his story.

“Hel’s Half-Acre” by Jack Campbell- Darkly humorous story of a front-line infantry unit whose soldiers each have their own personal AI riding along in their powered armor, mostly to threaten them into line.

"Jungle Walkers" by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell- American Marines in a fairly near-future South America find themselves caught unprepared and facing down a column of powered-armored invaders when conflict erupts on the Colombian-Venezulean border.

What I found interesting is how much of it involves things going wrong. The Americans have their own armor, but are forced to fight without it because their superiors didn't anticipate the maneuverability and maintenance problems the armor faced in the Colombian jungle, and the Marines consequently resorted to doing routine patrols unarmored. The Venezuelan invaders, meanwhile, are using new military technology bought from the Chinese that they have little familiarity or experience with. It's a good action story, and it was interesting to see a story where the protagonists aren't the guys with the fearsome new technology.

“The Last Days of the Kelly Gang" by David D. Levine- Outlaws force a reclusive inventor to build a steam-powered 3,000 pound suit of powered armor in 19^th century Australia. Lots of fun.

“Trauma Pod” by Alastair Reynolds- A human officer on a battlefield dominated by autonomous bipedal war machines called Mechs is badly wounded, kept alive in a survival pod that protects him and allows a military surgeon far from the battlefield to treat him remotely until he can be extracted. Frustrated as that extraction is repeatedly delayed while he sits helpless and unable to do his job while the battle rages around him, he orders the Mech sent to watch over his pod to bring him aboard.

I won't say what happens next, except that it's chillingly horrifying in a similar vein to Reynolds' other horror-oriented science fiction like “Diamond Dogs”- cold, creepy, with the more viscerally (literally or figuratively) horrifying elements being less disturbing than the minds that bring them about. Despite being a horror story, it remains science fiction in the purest sense- the scientific underpinnings of the premise are inextricable from the events, and the story could not be translated to a different genre and remain intact

“Power Armor: A Love Story” by David Barr Kirtley- Present-day (more or less) story about a time-traveling inventor from a totalitarian future who fled into our era. He's encased himself in an invulnerable suit of powered armor that he never, ever takes off, for fear of the assassins he knows the rulers of his original era have sent after him- one of whom has found him, and seeking a way to get at him through defenses no weapon can penetrate.

The premise is interesting, there's a lot of humor, and despite the light tone the story and main character also had considerable emotional power. The central metaphor of a man who's walled himself off behind a protective shell is sort of obvious, but it works, and in some ways is more subtle than it initially seems in ways that give it more emotional punch. (The protagonist comes from a particular background, the armor was built in a context related to that background and is worn because of a specific type of threat- if you stop at “this guy wears armor all the time” you're missing most of it.

“Helmet” by Daniel H. Wilson- Dark, rather chilling story where the protagonist lives with his little brother in a devastated city periodically terrorized by the central government's marauding powered-armored troop- until he finds himself carried off to be made one himself. It's very creepy, has a compelling main character, and has one of those moments that I love in science fiction where a setting element that doesn't seem to make sense suddenly fits perfectly.

I definitely recommend Armored. It will be of particular interest to military science fiction fans, but there's plenty of good stories beyond that subgenre as well that made it worthwhile for fans of science fiction in general. Also, in light of how common powered armor is in modern gaming- Warhammer 40,000, Halo, Crysis, Fallout, etc.- it might also make a good gift/gateway drug for someone who likes videogames or media franchises with science fiction settings but hasn't had much exposure to written SF.

Book Review: Firebird by Jack McDevitt

Firebird by Jack McDevitt is the sixth book in McDevitt's ongoing science fiction series about far future antiquities dealer Alex Benedict and his assistant/partner/pilot Chase Kolpath. Ideally, I'd recommend reading the Alex Benedict series in order (A Talent for War, Polaris, Seeker, The Devil's Eye, Firebird) but like the other books in the series Firebird works quite well as a stand-alone book and should be fairly easy to understand whether you've read its predecessors or not.

40 years ago on Alex and Chase's home, the colony world Rimway, the famous and controversial physicist Dr. Christopher Robin mysteriously vanished from the planet, never to be seen again. When his widow dies 40 years later, Alex is commissioned to find buyers for the renowned scientist's personal items. Seeking information that could help them build interest in the items among potential buyers, Alex and Chase delve into the history of Dr. Robin, an enigmatic man whose theories on the existence and nature of alternate universes made him a figure of intense controversy, shunned by some and idolized by others, whose mysterious disappearance has made him the subject of wild speculation ever since.

The trail leads them to encounter two of Robin's other interests. One is records, some recent and others going back thousands of years, of unidentified ships appearing near human worlds and then fading into nothingness a few minutes later. The other is human interstellar ships that depart on routine faster-than-light trips and are never seen again, a rare but troubling phenomenon that has claimed numerous victims throughout humanity's thousands of years of interstellar travel- including Gabriel Benedict, Alex's uncle and Chase' former employer. They also begin to discover clues that Robin was up to something strange in the final years before his disappearance- and may have been on the verge of a discovery with implications far beyond the mystery of his own fate.

Firebird is another solid entry in the Alex Benedict series. The main story is interesting and goes in some unexpected directions, and Chase Kolpath is once again an enjoyable character and first-person narrator. Much of the story is fairly sedentary and not too far removed from a conventional mystery story, with Chase and Alex investigating Robin's past by fairly prosaic means- interviewing people who knew him, searching for records, visiting places he been- but the mystery is interesting and made these scenes satisfying for me. It also segues well into the more specifically science fictional aspects of the story that become predominant as it progresses. There are also some more fast-paced or tense bits that work well.

I especially enjoyed the part of the story where the investigation takes Benedict and Chase to the planet Villanueva, a formerly populous and advanced world that was cut off from humanity for centuries by an interstellar dust cloud that extinguished the human population but left the infrastructure and the AIs charged with running and maintaining it intact. Left to themselves, they've continued to do exactly that, keeping Villanueva's dead cities intact and running for thousands of years- and making new human settlement impossible by attacking any who land. It's quite creepy, as Alex and Chase search for clues in clean, well-maintained, still-powered cities completely devoid of human life. The way the story deals with the AIs of Villaneuva is interesting, and leads to some interesting scenes later when Alex Benedict becomes the center of a political debate on the nature of AIs and human responsibility for those left behind by the death of Villaneuva's human population.

McDevitt is good at using rather mundane elements in ways that complement the science fiction/space opera aspects of the story- the implications of AI sentience are argued about on evening talk shows, Villaneuva is dangerous to human life not because its AIs are either interested in or capable of attacking humanity but because of the hordes of pro-AI activists and amateur treasure hunters descending on the planet and getting themselves killed after it becomes a subject of media attention, and the search for the truth about Dr. Christopher Robin is at least as much about old-fashioned investigative skills as it is dangerous journeys on hostile planets or in deep space. This could be dull if it were handled poorly, but in Firebird it's effective at giving the setting a greater feeling of solidity than it would have had otherwise.

The relatively familiar, recognizable future presented in the Alex Benedict books has often been the subject of criticism, for reasons I can appreciate but don't share. It fits the larger context of the setting, where human interstellar civilization has undergone multiple dark ages in the time between the present day and the stories, so thousands of years in the future doesn't equal thousands of years of technological progress. I also think the similarity of McDevitt's setting to our own world tends to be overstated by some people, probably because of what does and doesn't get attention in the stories. For instance, there are allusions to the fact that on many human worlds one can simply forgo employment and live- and apparently live fairly well- on some sort of government stipend every citizen gets, and that this is not a rare or stigmatized choice. That implies economic productivity far beyond what we have now, as well as a profound cultural difference, but the technological underpinnings of that don't come up because there's no reason for them to..

A lot of it boils down to one's own beliefs about the future and the extent to which a setting deviating from those beliefs impairs your enjoyment of the story. (I'm not of the “life in the future will necessarily be unrecognizable to us today” school of thought. It wouldn't surprise me, but I don't consider it so self-evidently true that the contrary assumption attacks my suspension of disbelief.) Both of these things vary widely from individual to individual, so while I like it myself I can certainly understand why it's a sticking point for some.

I would definitely recommend Firebird for fans of Jack McDevitt, and for fans of science fiction with a mystery/investigative bent. If you didn't care for McDevitt style before it's not going to wow you into changing your mind, but if you've enjoyed his work in the past it's well worth reading.

Book Review: Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont

Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont is the most recent book set in the same universe of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson, which Erikson and Esslemont created together, and Esslemont's fourth book in that universe. It is set chronologically after the eighth book in Erikson's series, Toll the Hounds, and picks up on many plot threads from that book and other earlier books, so I would strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with the series before reading this one. Reading Esslemont's previous three books before Orb Sceptre Throne would also be a good idea, but isn't as essential.

As usual, the book is split into a number of different plot threads. The story is set on the continent of Genabackis, focusing on the city-state of Darujhistan and its environs. The region has been wracked by conflict, with much of the continent devastated by war and its northern areas brought under the rule of the Malazan Empire. Moon's Spawn, an ancient flying fortress that recently plummeted into the sea, has become a hot spot for treasure hunters seeking to make their fortunes-including Antsy, one of the deserters from the armies of the Malazan Empire who settled in Darujhistan- and for those who would prey upon them.

On an island to the south, the army of the Seguleh- a mysterious, isolated people whose warriors are swordsmen without compare- set out for the mainland and Darujhistan, in response to a prophecy that they believe is now being fulfilled. They are led by Jan, the Second, who is eager to lead them to what he believes is their destiny and purpose as a people after millennia of exile from their original homeland- not realizing just what has summoned them back and what that destiny is.

Meanwhile, the situation around Darujhistan remains precarious, with many of the formerly independent cities of northern Genabackis and the nomadic tribes of the continent's plains chafing against the continued presence of the Malazans. Torvald Nom has been newly elevated to a seat on Darujhistan's ruling council, and finds himself faced with something far worse than the city's Byzantine and already frequently deadly politics. The region will soon be thrown into turmoil by a discovery made in the ruins outside Darujhistan, remnants of an ancient era when the city was the seat of a great empire. Now the evil that ruled over that empire thousands of years ago is returning, seeking to regain its power, starting with Darujhistan itself.

Orb Sceptre Throne is an enjoyable book that is worth reading for Malazan fans, though I wouldn't place it in the top tier of that series. The main story is quite interesting, though some of the secondary plot threads drag early on.. There's some quite exciting action sequences, including our first look at the Seguleh fighting as an army- previously they've only appeared one or two at a time- and some scenes involving the fully u unleashed power of the Malazan Empire's mysterious allies, the Moranth. The story also ties up some plot threads and answers some questions left by previous Malazan, in what I thought was a very satisfactory way. Parts of the ending were too abrupt and something of an anticlimax, though it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the journey there, and there were also aspects of the conclusion that I quite liked.

I liked the characters, and especially Jan of the Seguleh- the ruler and greatest warrior of an army of the deadliest swordsmen on the planet, and yet trapped and paralyzed by what he believes his duty and the duty of his people to be. The reborn Tyrant of Darujhistan is suitably creepy and ominous, utterly silent behind a blank mask as he holds court while another man speaks as his “voice.” The book also sees the return of some old favorites including Antsy and the other former Bridgeburners settled in Darujhistan, Torvald and Rallick Nom, the mysterious Kruppe, and - my other personal favorite- Traveler, AKA Dassem Ultor, trying to withdraw into quiet anonymity now that his decades-long quest for revenge against Hood, god of death, was made pointless after he was cheated of his chance for vengeance during the events of toll the hounds.

As with his previous book, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne shows a marked improvement in Esslemont's writing style compared to his first two books, Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard, moving the story smoothly and confidently along without the occasional awkwardness seen in his earlier work. Esslemont's writing style is once again more straightforward less prone to digression than Steven Erikson's; whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste, but for the most part I thought the story benefited from Esslemont's approach.

While it's not at the same level as his previous book, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne is a solid effort by Ian C. Esslemont that I would definitely recommend it for fans of the Malazan series.  

Book Review: In the Lion's Mouth by Michael Flynn

In the Lion's Mouth is the third book in Michael Flynn's science fiction series that began with The January Dancer and was followed by Up Jim River. I'd recommend reading those before reading this one; it's not strictly necessary in order to understand what's going on during In the Lion's Mouth, but it certainly helps.

In the far future, humanity is spread across countless worlds dominated by two great powers in a centuries-long cold war, the despotic Confederation of central worlds and loose alliance that opposes it called the United league of the periphery. Donovan buigh was once a Shadow, an agent of the confederation's elite intelligence service- before he was subjected to experimental mind altering-procedure that was supposed to create a single man with the skills and expertise of an entire team of experts but instead left him with huge gaps in his memory and a fragmented mind split between multiple quarreling personalities. He ended up in the Periphery, a broken man quietly drinking himself into his grave until he found himself drawn back into the long struggle between the and Confederation and league, now defending his new home from the machinations of the Confederation and it's rulers, the mysterious oligarchs known only as Those of Name.

He has finally started to gain a measure of peace and purpose in his new life when he finds himself forced back into the old one by a Confederate agent he met decades before (during The Januaryy Dancer), Ravn Olafsdottr. She abducts Donovan and smuggles him back into the Confederation- but not on behalf of Those of Name. The Shadows are wracked by an internal struggle between those loyal to Those of Name and those who now seek to overthrow them, and the latter want Donovan- less for who he is than for who he used to be, in the long empty gaps of his memory. Donovan eventually agrees to join them, putting him on a collision course with some of the deadliest killers in the galaxy, the truth about his own identity, and Those of Name themselves.

In the Lion's Mouth is a highly enjoyable book and a fine continuation of the series that started with The January Dancer. I loved the central characters Donovan buigh and Ravn Olafsdottr, and the plot is interesting and exciting. There are a number of well-done action scenes, and Flynn's talent for description in general is again in evidence.

The framing device of the book is that the story is being told by Ravn Olafsdottr, who has snuck back into the League after the main events of the book to bring Donovan's story to Bridget ban, a long-time veteran of the League's own intelligence service, who has spent her life on the opposite side of the long cold war between the two great powers, and her daughter with Donovan, Mearana. This proves to very effective, both because it provides a different viewpoint from the previous books in the series and because of the atmosphere it creates when the book occasionally shifts from the main narrative back to the frame story. The tension of the interactions between two lifelong enemies sharing a brief truce and the stress and anxiety of Bridget ban and her daughter as Ravn tells herstory - and mockingly refuses to reveal ahead of time if Donovan will be alive or dead at the end of it- are palpable, and this adds a lot.

My one initial disappointment with In the Lion's Mouth was that it is relatively constrained in scope, focusing on just a few worlds. Consequently, it doesn't have the same variety and epic sense of scale as its predecessors, which took the reader all the periphery and beyond. In the Lion's Mouth, by contrast, is relatively modest in scope, concentrating on a few planets. I say “initial” because once I had adjusted to it I thought it worked quite well for the sort of story the author is telling here, and Flynn shows that he can still do a good story in this setting while working on a more constrained scale. The narrower scope of the main story also fits well thematically with the setting, adding to the contrast between the despotic Confederation and the freewheeling diversity of the League, and complements the claustrophobic anxiety of the frame story.

I highly recommend In the Lion's Mouth for space opera fans, though I would encourage people who haven't read The January Dancer and Up Jim River to do so first. The entire series is well-worth getting into.

Book Review: Star Dragon by Mike Brotherton

Star Dragon is the debut novel of Mike Brotherton, who works as a professor of astronomy at the University of Wyoming. You can visit his website here.

Centuries from now, in a world where biotechnology is ubiquitous in the human race has begun to spread outwards to other stars, a corporation called Biolathe receives a centuries-old radio transmission from an interstellar probe transmitting from SS Cygni. SS Cygni a variable binary star system comprised of a main-sequence star and a white dwarf, notable for the dramatic novae it periodically undergoes as hydrogen from the larger star is drawn off by the gravity of its smaller but much denser companion, accumulating and eventually undergoing nuclear fusion on the surface of the dwarf. The probe's engine signal, however, contain something even more interesting- in the accretion disc of stellar plasma spiraling towards the dwarf there is something alive, somehow able to survive at temperatures and pressures that are nearly enough to ignite nuclear fusion.

Eager to learn more about this unprecedented- and potentially very lucrative, if they can figure out it works- form of life, which Biolathe has dubbed a “star dragon,” the company decides to send a manned expedition to SS Cygni to study on one of their ships, the Karamojo. Their mission will be to study, and if possible capture, this newly discovered form of life. The relativistic speeds human spacecraft can achieve have made regular interstellar flights to nearby solar systems feasible- but SS Cygni is so distant that, while the voyage there and back will take only a few subjective years for the crew of five, 500 years will have passed back on Earth by the time they return.

Interstellar flight is a technology humans have mastered and the risks involved in actually traveling to SS Cygni are modest, but the trip is still potentially perilous. SS Cygni's variable cycle lasts seven to eight weeks, but it still isn't possible to determine in advance just when its next outburst will come, and when it does the binary's luminosity jumps to many times its normal level in less than a day and becomes more than enough to fry a ship nearby. Aside form its existence and habitat, virtually nothing about the dragon is known- its behavior, its origins, its abilities, how many fellow members of its species it might be accompanied by, or just how it will react to an attempt to capture it. All five members of the crew have their own reasons for essentially saying goodbye to virtually everything they've ever known to go a journey that will end with them half a millennium out of their own time. For shipboard xenobiologist Samuel Fisher it's his fascination, and then growing obsession, with the dragon itself- an obsession that threatens to bring into conflict with other members of the crew in the midst of what is already a potentially very dangerous situation filled with unknowns.

I liked Star Dragon. Brotherton makes good use of his background in astrophysics to make SS Cygni a compelling environment, and the story of the character's journey there and exploration of it is well-done and does a good job of combining human drama with the dangers and wonders of SS Cygni and the mysterious dragon.

I enjoyed the characterization, which was both nicely done and more integral to the story than is often the case in hard science fiction stories focused on an unusual environment (e.g. Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg, Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, etc.) The crew is interesting, and Brotherton does a good job of something I particularly like to see done well- portraying a character being a jerk without being a villain, and without either making him seem one-dimensionally, pointlessly, or irredeemably bad, or going too far in the opposite direction and making him so reasonable or sympathetic that his faults seem trivial. I also liked the Karamojo's AI, Papa, who is an interesting character in his own right as a being with a personality that is in many ways human-like, but is often bound by the inescapable imperatives programmed into him by his creator- he has enough freedom to wish he could give a crew member he doesn't like a piece of his mind, or resent it when a crew member's emotional distress sets off a program that compels him to start asking questions designed to probe their psyche when he wishes he could just express sympathy, but not enough to actually do what he wants. The parts of the book with him as the viewpoint character were especially effective.

The setting is nicely realized, but inside and outside the Karamojo. Brotherton's portrayal of SS Cygni was quite effective at evoking an alien, dangerous, almost apocalyptic environment, and the book's examination of how the binary, its accretion disk, it's a recurring nova cycle is interesting and incorporated into the story well. The Karamojo itself is rather unusual, the product of a society where biological technology is ubiquitous and so advanced that people can radically change their entire bodies almost casually and entire live organisms can manufactured as readily as mechanical parts. While we are shown very little of human society at large what we get from the ship and crew does a very good job of giving a sense of a future that seems quite alien in many ways.

My only complaint is that I wish there had been more on the star dragon itself, and how it functioned in an environment as hostile as an accretion disc around a nova-prone white dwarf. What we learn is interesting, but I feel there was something of a missed opportunity here.

That's a fairly minor complaint, however, and all in all Star Dragon is a fine book that I'd recommend to any hard science fiction fan, especially if you want a story with more emphasis than usual on the characters or like science fiction about possible forms of life in exotic and extreme environments in the vein of authors like Hal Clement or Stephen Baxter. It's a very solid debut for Mike Brotherton.

Book Review: Gilded Latin Bones by Glen Cook

Gilded Latten Bones is the 13th book in Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. fantasy/detective series. Like all Garrett books, Gilded Latten Bones' primary plot stands alone, but I very strongly recommend reading the previous Garrett books before reading this one; the story is enjoyable on its own, but there's a lot about the book that is more effective if you've spent time with Garrett and company before.

As the story begins, Garrett has finally started to settle down. He and his longtime on-again off-again girlfriend Tinnie Tate are engaged, and Garrett has left his uncertain and often dangerous life  as private investigator for secure employment in his home city of TunFaire, capital of the kingdom of Karenta, as a security specialist for the wealthy Tate family's thriving manufacturing empire. This new-found peace is shattered by the late-night arrival of several armed thugs who had been hired by an unknown party to abduct Tinnie, followed by the news that Garrett's long-time friend Morley Dotes, elven assassin and underworld figure turned mostly-legitimate entrepreneur, is comatose after being brutally attacked and left for dead in a late-night ambush on the streets of TunFaire. Despite Tinnie's disapproval, protests, and volcanic temper, along with Garrett's own desire to leave the danger and economic insecurity of his old career as a private eye behind him, he now delves back into TunFaire' s criminal underworld to find out who is responsible for the attacks on his fiancée and his best friend- and whether or not they're related.

TunFaire has settled down, too. Karenta's decades' long war with its rival Venegeta, a devastating conflict over silver mines (fuel for the magic of the sorcerer-aristocrats who rule Karenta) that consumed whole generations of young men, is over. The omnipresent racial tensions that threatened to boil over into large-scale violence with the war's end, when thousands of newly unemployed conscript soldiers were thrust into a civilian society where many trades were dominated by nonhumans after decades of economic adjustment to the lengthy and often permanent absences of virtually all of its young human men, have cooled a bit. The establishment of a more professional and less corrupt police force by Deal Relway, the recently appointed commander of the city watch, has brought an end to much of the overt criminality that plagued the city and created an era of (comparative) law and order.

To resolve the mystery, he'll have to seek out the aid of his old ally the Dead Man, the 500-year old corpse of a member of a powerful nonhuman race called the Loghyr whose original occupant hasn't departed yet, and some other acquaintances from his less reputable past. His investigation will required him to face a cabal of corpse-stealing sorcerers and their grotesque creations, mysterious political interference with his investigation, corruption at high levels of TunFaire society, and, hardest of all to confront, the knowledge that his duty to his old friend may cost him the love of his life.

I greatly enjoyed Golden Latten Bones and think it's an excellent addition to the Garrett series. As always, Garrett's first-person narration and jaded sense of humor is highly entertaining and is a huge part of what makes the story so enjoyable. I liked the central mystery, though to a great extent it's a backdrop- this book is, probably more than any other entry in the series, about Garrett rather than the case he's working on. The book is somewhat more sedentary than usual, with Garrett doing less of the legwork for the case himself- his circle of allies, sources, and friends has grown greatly since the beginning of the series, and that comes into play here. The story remains interesting, however, and there are some nice action sequences as well.

The book is more character-focused than its predecessors, and the book has a particular focus on how Garrett and the people in his life have grown and changed- or how they haven't- since we first met them. Barrett is noticeably off his game when he first begins investigating after spending over a year in his less demanding job working for the Tate family, and begins to wonder if he's no longer cut out for the demands of his old career and lifestyle. When he first moves back into his old residence- which his assistant Pular Singe and long-time housekeeper Dean have continued to use in his absence- so that he can keep an eye on the wounded Morley, he's startled by just how much frailer the elderly Dean has become. Singe, meanwhile, has grown remarkably since first meeting Garrett. A member of a despised race called ratpeople, an unnatural hybrid species created a few centuries ago in some sorcerer's bizarre experiments, she has gone from living in desperate poverty under the yoke of her thuggish elder brother and working as a tracker due to her preternaturally sensitive sense of smell to working as the manager of Garrett's office and financial affairs, has learned to read and write (an uncommon skill in general and unheard of among ratpeople), and speaks to Garrett as an equal.

I especially liked the portrayal of Tinnie Tate. Tinnie has generally been portrayed as a short-tempered, possessive, and frequently unreasonable person. And she still is, but we see her in greater and more sympathetic depth here as someone whose driving emotion is not anger or jealousy but fear, who knows that her behavior is frequently unreasonable, self-destructive, and threatens to drive away the very people she loves and is so afraid of losing, but feels like she is so locked into that pattern of thought and behavior that she can't stop. Cook's portrayal of this is very effective, and rather poignant if you've known somebody like that yourself.

The city of TunFaire remains one of my favorite fantasy settings, taking many of the typical conventions of fantasy- fairly widespread magic, a roughly medieval level of technology, races like elves and dwarves- and creating something that feels quite different from the typical fantasy world. It's interesting to see how it, too, is changing, as society adjusts to the end of the war, new inventions make large-scale manufacturing more economically significant than it has ever been before, and Relway's reformed city watch brings a previously unknown level of law and order to the city- and is becoming a political force in its own right. TunFaire is more peaceful than it used to be- though that's a relative measure.

The overall tone of the story is more upbeat than many of the previous Garrett books. The Garrett, P.I. series has never been as dark as Glen Cook's Black Company series, and Garrett himself is a fun character and narrator, but nevertheless a number of the previous Garrett books have had a strong sense of sadness or melancholy about them. There's some of that here, too, but all in all the world seems brighter here than it often has in the past.

Gilded Latten Bones is is very strongly recommended for fans of the Garrett series, and I strongly recommend the series as a whole (starting with Sweet Silver Blues) for anyone who likes fantasy and is interested in something different from the norm.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everybody!

All in all, while Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic was not as active as many other science fiction blogs in 2011, I'm quite pleased with how things have turned out and hope to increase my output in 2012. I hope you've enjoyed reading it, and will continue coming back here in the year to come. I wanted to start this year off on a positive note by thanking some people who have helped this blog in one way or another. Some names have been truncated to protect the innocent:

My friends JT, Kevin, Dave, Peter, Lecester, Cheryl, and Catherine.

Midnight and Toshi.

All of my other friends, who know who they are.

My family.

Dr. B and the other Kevin.

T and F.

Damon, Jay, and Elena at Boomtron, Dan, Corey, and Nick at Robot Geek, and Sam and Matt at Kuribo's Shoes.

People online who have helped me in one way or another: Jacob, Danny, Jim, Daran, TB, Jeremy, Alfonso, Keisha, the other Peter, and everybody else.

Everyone who has linked to me.

The folks at Tor Books, Night Shade Books, and everyone else who's sent me something to review.

The good people at Pyr Books for using not one but two quotes from (separate) things I've written as back cover blurbs on one of their books.. Hell of a cool surprise to run into at Barnes and Noble.

The authors I've had some sort of contact with: John Meaney, Michael Z. Williamson, Tom Lloyd, Amy Sterling Casil, and especially Neal Asher and Victor Milan. And anyone I may have left out.

My beloved Unattainable Bar Chick, for her unfailing friendliness, kindness, waitressing and bartending professionalism, willingness to laugh at my stupid jokes, and Velma Dinkley/Lisa Loeb-esque hotness. You were always far nicer to me than you had to be, and were the brightest spot of my week whenever we spoke. I always knew that I would never tell you how I felt about you, but you made me wish I could have. Thank you, and best of luck with everything

And, of course, everyone who takes the time to read Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic. I tend to be pretty useless trying to express myself with spoken words when I'm face-to-face with people unless it's with people I already know well, so being able to do so through writing online is very precious to me, and so is knowing that someone is actually reading it.

Thank you all. I'm going to make 2012 Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic's best year yet.

The Star Wars Holiday Special teaches us to hate Christmas, life

Christmas is nearly upon us, so I've decided to cross-post my traditional yearly post on The Star Wars Holiday Special from my other blog, Pointless Side Quest. Please to enjoy, for a certain value of "enjoy."

It's the Christmas season once again. To celebrate, this is the time of year when this blog make a foray beyond the world of video games into the larger world of holiday entertainment. Sadly, there is a dark side to Christmas. I'm not talking about the weather, or the parents rending each other apart like rabid beasts at Toys R Us, or the built-up resentment that can explode at family gatherings, or those horrific modernized versions of Christmas carols that every place of business in the state of Illinois is apparently required by law to defile my eardrums with for the entire month of December. No, I speak of something much worse...

The Star Wars Holiday Special has appeared on American television once, in 1978, and oozed into various foreign markets to make similarly brief appearances over the next few years. It has never been rebroadcast in the US and has never been released on home video in any format. George Lucas, who would probably release a boxed set of the prequel trilogy with an added bonus DVD containing 90 minutes of footage from the parking lot security cameras of Skywalker Ranch and call it the "Star Wars Ultimate Edition" if he thought anyone would buy it, disavows it and has refused to make it available.

Scorned by legitimate society, it exists only in the form of unauthorized copies made from VCR recordings of the original. Like so many other blasphemous tomes of daemonic horror bearing unspeakable eldritch knowledge never meant for the eyes of Man- Friedrich von Junzt's Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon, Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy- it circulates covertly in the dark corners of the world (I think that's an entirely fair description of most file-sharing networks) where students of the grotesque and unnatural risk their very sanity to seek it out.

It was in 2006 that I acquired a copy of The Star Wars Holiday Special, complete with the original 1978 commercials. It should have been a fine year: Neal Asher, David Drake, and Stephen Baxter all had multiple new books rolling off the presses. Ace Combat Zero came out for the PlayStation 2, and the release of the PlayStation 3 paved the way for me to actually buy one three years later. Iron Maiden, Evergrey, In Flames, Norther, Strapping Young Lad,  Tool, Motorhead, Blind Guardian,  and Týr released new albums. Instead, there would be only the taste of ashes.

Now, one thing I share with several of my friends is the ability to enjoy crap. From 1950's skiffy schlock, to watching a near-comatose Richard Burton mumble his way through the uncut version of The Exorcist II, to Sylvester Stallone's arm wrestling epic Over the Top, to the climactic scene of The Satanic Rites of Dracula where Christopher Lee is killed by running into a small shrubbery, to Oscar-winning actor George Kennedy and a bunch of stupid teenagers trapped on a boat where they are picked off one by one by an evil hybrid cat/rat/godawful puppet in The Uninvited, to a seemingly endless horde of Godfrey Ho "ninja" "movies" created by buying the rights to various Asian films, redubbing them, splicing them together with new footage of white guys in brightly colored and sometimes rhinestone-studded pajamas running around and doing flips in what appears to a small municipal park, and feebly attempting to tie them together and pretend that the resulting Frankensteinian abomination was a coherent story, we've seen it all. We take that sort of thing in stride.

I want you to have that context in mind when I say that my first two attempts to watch this had to be aborted within the first half hour because the guys I was watching it with couldn't stand it any longer.

The plot, such as it is, is that Chewbacca is returning to his home and family on the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk to celebrate "Life Day," one of those vague holidays characters in kids' fantasy shows would celebrate when it was snowing and they wanted to do something festively nonsectarian. But the system is in the grip of an Imperial blockade fleet commanded by recycled movie footage of Darth Vader, and... Well, basically, there's a string of largely unrelated, godawful variety showesque events set in something that resembles the Star Wars universe featuring various C-list celebrities until things finally shudder to a halt what seems like several geological epochs later.

It's got all of the heroes from the movie making their return, plus James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader. The only major actors from Star Wars not present- unless one also counts David Prowse, who appears only in the form of reused movie footage, or Carrie Fisher, whose soul appears to have departed her body and wandered off for much of her screen time- are Alec Guinness as Ben Kenobi and Peter Cushing as Tarkin, whose characters were saved from appearances here by the sweet, merciful embrace of death.(Which makes it suddenly seem very suspicious that Kenobi and Tarkin both met their ends because they conspicuously chose not to protect themselves from imminent danger, and either possessed supernatural powers that included the ability to sense horrible, cataclysmic events or hung out with people who did.) What could possibly have gone wrong?

There are some things the human mind cannot explain, only try to describe. Some of the thrilling spectacles we're treated to include:

Over ten minutes of Chewbacca's family screaming at each in Wookie, sans subtiitles! This is what the show leads off with. Little-known fact: Lucas actually wanted the first 20 minutes of the original Star Wars to focus on R2-D2 making random beep-bloop noises while doing routine maintenance on the Tantive IV's cafeteria vending machines, but was forced to start the movie with an exciting space battle instead when the studio said that his original cut of the film was too long.

Chewbacca's elderly father Itchy groaning in ecstasy while watching virtual reality porn! You have no idea how badly I wish I was making that up. NO idea.

Ever wondered what an elderly Wookie having an orgasm looks like? Of course not, but now you know anyway.

Reused footage from the movie!

Reused footage from the movie tinted bright green, so that a shot of the Millennium Falcon approaching Yavin can double as a shot of a bright green Millennium Falcon approaching Kashyyyk! Alternately, if you're a die-hard Star Wars fan desperately trying to escape from the implications of this monstrosity actually being a canonical part of the Star Wars universe, it could be interpreted to mean that the entire special is actually taking  place inside the Matrix. In which case it's arguably a better Matrix film than Matrix Revolutions.

Several minutes of Chewbacca's repulsive son Lumpy watching miniature holographic acrobats! That's right, Chewbacca's immediate kin consists of two guys named "Itchy" and "Lumpy." Presumably, the name "Chewbacca" is a human-pronounceable approximation of the Wookie word for "Scabby" or "Oozing."

Lumpy! I've already mentioned his role in the Special's events, but the very existence of this... this thing appalls me so much that it warrants its own entry. With the possible exception of that loathsome, soulless homunculus wrought in obscene parody of a human child from Son of the Mask (the CGI baby, not Jamie Kennedy), nothing has ever filled with such instinctive horror.

JEFFERSON STARSHIP!

Harvey Korman in a dress! And in two other separate parts, as an amorous Tatooine cantina patron and a cyborg instructional video announcer (a cyborg who announces in an instructional video, that is, not an announcer in an instructional video about cyborgs) who appears to be suffering from some sort of degenerative motor neuron disorder. Not since Peter Sellers in Dr. Stranglove has there been such a multi-role tour de force!

The musical stylings of Bea Arthur! This is actually the closest we get to a high point.

Harvey Korman trying to get into Bea Arthur's pants! Though anyone hoping for some actual on-screen Hedley-on-Maude action will be disappointed, sadly.

An animated segment featuring the  most repellently butt-ugly animation in human history! It does have the first-ever appearance of Boba Fett, which some people may be interested in. Frankly, I've always considered Fett one of the most overrated characters in fiction. It's a damning indictment of how low our society's standards of masculinity have fallen when possessing some basic tracking abilities, dressing like the Rocketeer, flying around in a big metal shoe, and being killed by a blind man is enough of a résumé to be declared Biggest Badass Ever.

One odd thing is that the cartoon, like a number of other segments, is actually introduced as something being watched by Lumpy. Which implies that this segment depicts events that are fictional not only to us but to the characters, and that the cartoon itself actually exists within the Star Wars universe.

Which, I just realized, means that Jefferson Starship does, too.

A brief appearance by an incredibly bored-looking Harrison Ford, who doesn't even try to conceal his utter contempt for the proceedings!

Mark Hamill wearing more makeup than Queen Amidala, Bozo the Clown, and Dick Clark combined! Usually I'd be reluctant to say something nasty about this, since it's probably to conceal the injuries Hamill had suffered in a car crash the previous year, but The Star Wars Holiday Special exists on a plane where human concepts of morality and decency are not merely absent, but meaningless. If you gaze into the bellowing unsubtitled Wookie abyss, the bellowing unsubtitled Wookie abyss gazes also into you.

Carrie Fisher singing a festive Life Day carol set to the tune of the classic Star Wars theme while clearly stoned out of her mind! But you don't have to take my word for it:



She's no Bea Arthur, I'll tell you that much.

Eventually, Chewbacca makes it home for the holidays with his repellent family. To the best of my recollection, no one learns a valuable lesson about The True Meaning of Life Day, if in fact it has one.

I really can't do justice to how teeth-gratingly bad it is. I have no strong personal stake in Star Wars. I liked the original movies and a few of the tie-in books, but I've never had the strong emotional attachment to Star Wars that some people do. I didn't like the prequel trilogy but never had the sort of "I have sworn a Sicilian blood oath of vengeance upon George Lucas' and his entire family line because he murdered my family, burned down my village, and deflowered my house pets" response that is often seen on the Internet. The idea of crap with the name Star Wars on it is not some sort of personal affront to me. Given that sitting through this made me want to gouge out my own eyes and just run through the streets of Chicago gibbering like a lunatic until my heart and/or lungs burst, I can only imagine how devoted Star Wars fans feel about it.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Other stuff I'm up to

In addition to this blog, I'm also a regular contributor at several other sites, mostly video game-related. If that's also a topic you're interested in, or if for some reason you just want more of my unwieldy-mountain-of-clauses approach to writing, check out:

Pointless Side Quest

My other blog. Dedicated to the lowest form of geek humor: Jokes about video games. I do occasionally lower myself to attempting actual insight, though that seldom ends well. Plus, my seasonally festive review of The Star Wars Holiday Special!

Robot Geek

Gaming site where I'm on the staff.   More constrained than the above in many ways, since I'm mostly expected to offer actual legitimate commentary or information, but I make do. Past articles include:

Why I (sort of) care about the absurdity of Homefront- Perhaps of the most relevance to the science fiction and fantasy field, on the nature of suspension of disbelief.

Moral choices in Infamous: The good, the bad, and the downright nonsensical- About what makes choices in games interesting. Or fail to be, in some cases.

Where's Your God Now, Mario?: Religious Censorship in Games- A look back at the strict yet bizarrely inconsistent golden age of Nintendo of America's Standards and Practices, when naming a spell “Holy” or showing a cross on a coffin was forbidden due to fears that any religious imagery or references could cause offense or controversy, and yet a Gameboy game that climaxes in deicide was approved for release.

Kuribo's Shoes

Recently launched gaming/humor site I'm a writer for. More overtly ridiculous than Pointless Side Quest tends to be.

Nintendo announces new voice actor for Mario: Michael Ironside

2K Games apologizes for statements by Duke Nukem Forever PR team, says reviewers will NOT be hunted for sport

The pitiless advance of Nintendo’s all-devouring patent juggernaut: An unbiased and objective analysis

Activision announces upcoming release of Call of Duty: 18th-Century Warfare

Archaeologists uncover records of early Duke Nukem Forever development in 4,500-year-old Sumerian ruins

So, have a look if anything like that interests you. I strongly endorse Robot Geek and Kuribo's Shoes in general; they're both great sites. More stuff actually written for this blog coming soon.

Book Review: Out of the Waters by David Drake

Out of the Waters is the second novel in David Drake's “Books of the Elements” fantasy series, following The Legions of Fire. I recommend reading the first book before this one, though Out of the Waters is a self-contained story and stands up well on its own.

Like its predecessor, Out of the Waters centers on the city of Carce, the capital of a sprawling empire. Gaius Alphenus Saxa, a wealthy aristocrat, has been newly appointed as the governor of Lusitania, one of the provinces of Carce's vast empire, and is financing a lavish public spectacle to celebrate. The performance is going as planned when a shocking sight appears in the theater- images of a great city defended by strange flying ships, being attacked by a monstrous many-limbed creature from the sea that grows larger and larger as it advances on the city.

As the rest of the crowd continues to watch, enraptured, Saxa's son Varus has a prophetic vision. He realizes that they are witnessing a scene from the distant past, the destruction of ancient Atlantis by the mythical beast known as the Typhon- a vast, monstrous being that will soon return to lay waste to the entire world. His stepmother Hedia, a woman who fears almost nothing, is transfixed with terror at the sight of strange men made out of glass walking the battlements of the siege city- the same creatures she has seen in a series of recent nightmares. And his younger sister Alphena, watching the cataclysmic scene of destruction, doesn't see the monstrous Typhon at all- she sees a man.

Saxa and the crowd are delighted, thinking it must be some amazing feat of stagecraft, but Varus, Alphena, Hedia, and Varus' friend Corylus - have already witnessed too much to confuse the vision with some sort of stage trickery. Together, the five have already saved Carce from a doom foreseen in one of Varus' visions, and now they must find a way to do so again. There are many dangers in their path and many mysteries to unravel- the reason for Atlantis' terrible fate, the origins and nature of the Typhon itself, and how they can possibly stop something that crushed a civilization even more advanced than Carce, and said in myth to be so terrible that only Zeus himself was able to stop it.

I really liked Out of the Waters. The book follows a similar structure as The Legions of Fire, splitting up the heroes early on and sending them on separate journeys that eventually converge again, and like its predecessor this format works quite well. The plot is exciting and interesting, especially as the true nature and origins of the Typhon are revealed, and Drake does a really good job of actually making a grotesque, world-destroying monstrosity the heart of a very emotionally engaging story.

The different strands of the plot are written such that each of the four main viewpoint characters has a very distinctive voice, and Drake is very effective in using this to bring them to life. Varus' sister Alphena gets to take a more active role in the story this time, and it was interesting to see her grow as a person compared to who she was at the start of the first book.

The setting is unusual for this sort of fantasy in that Carce, its empire, and its culture are quite explicitly Rome in all but name- aside from “Carce,” even names are kept the same. In addition to making Carce feel very different from a more typical fantasy setting, Drake's attention to historical detail frequently makes Carce seem much more foreign to a modern reader than many imaginary worlds, even during mundane events. There are aspects of it that you'll get more out of if you already have some knowledge of the period, but the book explains things well enough that its not a requirement to understand what's going on. The Typhon is inspired by an interesting mixture of Classical and American Indian (Cherokee, more specifically) mythology, and Drake's combination and interpretation of them result in something that is both horrifying and poignant.

Many aspects of the book- lost Atlantis, the Typhon, some of the places the characters journey to- put me in mind of early American fantasy and “weird fiction” authors like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, or (to some extent) H.P. Lovecraft, not so much in their specifics but in the way they evoke the the sense of the cosmos as something frighteningly vast, in both space and time. This contributes to the overall tone of the book, which (like most of Drake's fantasy, now that I think about it) is probably best described as a high fantasy story set in a sword-and-sorcery universe. The world is indifferent to humanity and its fate, magic and the supernatural tend to be frightening, disturbing things, human life is frequently very cheap, and there's no sign of any sort of higher power watching over mankind, but the protagonists are nevertheless heroic figures who will undergo whatever it takes to protect the world.

I highly recommend Out of the Waters for fans of fantasy, and especially for fans of Drake's previous work.