Review of Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin

Title: Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse
Editors: Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin 
Publisher: Jurassic London
Published: October 2011
Genre: short stories, science fiction fantasy horror
Source: review copy from author Sam Wilson
Rating: 7/10

I debated reviewing Pandemonium. I received a review copy in November 2011, but it’s only now that I read the whole thing cover to cover. When I finished, I learned that Pandemonium was a limited edition. Very limited: it was available for just over a year and now it’s out of print in both paper and digital formats. Questioning the merits of reviewing a book that no one can buy, I figured I could perhaps help someone decide whether or not to take it off the tbr pile, borrow a copy from a library or friend, or perhaps check out some of the stories if they appear elsewhere. And of course there might be another print run. So, on with the end of the world!

The apocalypse is, of course, the theme of this anthology, but it’s also inspired by the  work of John Martin an English Romantic painter famous for grandiose apocalyptic visions based on his intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and related mythology (such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost). The cover of Pandemonium features the painting Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, which is also the title of one of the most harrowing stories in the collection. I’d seen The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium  in the Louvre last year, and the anthology encouraged me to check out more of Martin’s work online. And I must say – it’s impressive stuff. It’s epic. And I love the idea of an sff and horror anthology based on those paintings.

Admittedly, it doesn’t encourage a great deal of variation in apocalyptic visions. With John Martin and his art in mind, many of the stories use Christian mythology, so there are plenty of angels, demons, and worlds ending in fire. But while a few stories are a bit dreary, others offer creative twists or alternative visions. Many don’t actually seem to take much inspiration from the paintings, but I guess it’s an anthology based on the apocalypse, not an anthology based on John Martin.

The collection starts out very strong. The first story, “The Architect of Hell” by David Bryher, is still one of my favourites. It’s written as a series of hilarious letters from the demon Mulciber (the architect of the demon city Pandemonium in Paradise Lost) to John Martin himself, asking John to design Pandemonium for him. Mulciber lost all his creative abilities when God threw him out of heaven and Lucifer’s going to be really angry if Mulciber can’t deliver.The story is clearly based on the golden city in The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium and is actually a surprisingly bright start to the anthology: it’s quirky, funny and ends on a note that’s doubly apocalyptic but hopeful too. Also, the apocalypse – or rather post-apocalypse – depicted in the story is the fallen angels’, not the humans’.

There’s actually plenty of humour here; perhaps the best way to deal with the end of the world. The second story, “Chislehurst Messiah” by Lauren Beukes is a kind of black comedy horror set in an affluent English suburb. A snooty upper middle class bastard plays a Facebook game while his wife dies horribly, and he thinks about how this is an easier way of getting her money than divorcing her. The world is ending, but his thoughts remain ridiculously selfish and narrow-minded:

He needed to get to the gym; his abs were turning into jelly. Too much stale bruschetta and salty snack foods. But the one in the building’s basement stank like an abbatoir and the Stairmaster was practically alive with maggots. (25)

High on the uppers he stole from one a neighbouring apartment, he imagines that he could be the Messiah for the supposedly aimless lower-class “chavs” who are  running riot in England as society falls apart.

“OMG GTFO” by S.L. Grey is another satire, with a narrative composed of emails, interview transcripts, Twitter feeds, and so on. It describes a world descending into chaos as politicians, celebrities and other prominent figures are randomly possessed by dead people who describe visions of hell. But is it a vision of hell itself or hell on earth? The humour comes from the kind of speech you get on Twitter and in emails, the rubbish that spews from the mouths of air-headed celebrities, and the little ironies that emerge as the world degrades. It’s a great story.

There’s an amusing case of denial in “Another Abyss” by Magnus Anderson which features another snooty upper middle class English character. Leticia’s husband Geoff has just been promoted, and she’s hosting a dinner party to celebrate and gloat. She’s extremely upset that the damn apocalypse is ruining the evening with a blood-red sky (forcing her to close the curtains more than is respectable) and lava pouring down the lawn. Leticia is someone who’d be bragging about the cost her antique violin while Rome burned. The burning world-scenario is a common one in this anthology, but like the better stories that use it, Anderson makes it the background of a character-based tale rather than taking the more boring route of putting cliched apocalyptic destruction at the forefront.

“The End of the World” by Den Patrick is not as elegantly humorous as the previous four, with character names like Bumblefuck, Rigorprick, Spittleshite and Candy. But it’s tongue-in cheek, and surprisingly cute – the demon Spittleshite has fallen for a human named Candy and as a result he’s not especially keen about the apocalypse that’s about to begin. The story can be silly and crude, but it’s also hopeful (well, sort of) and quite fun.

Being an agnostic, I enjoyed the irreverent nature of all the stories that address Christian beliefs, which are typically are revealed to be useless or deceptive while the truth is rather disturbing. It helps to have a sense of humour when the apocalypse comes, but being a Christian seems pretty pointless.

Of these stories, “Evacuation” by Tom Pollock is the most beautiful and touching; instantly one of my favourites here. The evacuation in the title is the evacuation of Earth by the angels. The archangel Michael goes to find the last two humans, who have been held back by Michael’s lover, the angel Zaphkiel. The stories segues back and forth between the present story on the burning earth and the history of their relationship in heaven, bringing up issues of the war with Lucifer, and doubt in God.

“The Day or the Hour” by Jonathan Oliver sees Reverend Paul Smith questioning his faith when he finds himself among “the chosen” who have who have “been called to fight the forces of Satan” (164) in the final battle between good and evil. Commanded by cold, arrogant angels, Paul doesn’t feel divine love and inspiration. He feels like canon fodder in someone else’s war.

Like “Another Abyss”, “The Harvest” by Chrysanthy Balis is a story of denial, although in this case it’s extreme religious belief distorting the characters’ perception. Paul and Pepper are fully aware that their world is ending, but they’re delighted, believing that the Rapture is here at last, and soon they’ll be taken up to heaven. They decide that it’s best to wait for God in their expensive “neo-Italianate home” (203) full of earthly comforts, watching the drama unfold on their “75″ Panasonice LED flat screen” (204), favouring the Christian Broadasting Network where they “could get the real news”. They’re full of self-righteous, contradictory bullshit, but also some rather funny ideas about what will happen:

“Paul, what about Schultzie [the dog]? […] If we hold onto him real tight maybe he’ll get Raptured along with us?”

“Anything’s possible under the Lord honey,” (203)

“What if He doesn’t come for us?”

Paul had turned stern and taken her by the shoulders. “It’s not possible, do you hear me? We’re plugged in to Jesus. And the Bible says that it’s by His grace alone that we’re saved. Now, if that’s not true then nothing is.” (205)

Jesus is coming to conquer Satan at last, and God’s going to create a New Jerusalem for us to live in.”

“Would we be able to get a house like this one?”

“Sure! […] “But with a bigger pool!”(205)

“What if the Rapture begins but the angels can’t find us because we’re inside?”(206)

All these questions come from Paul’s wife Pepper, a rather daft ideal of femininity. Her daffy character makes sense in the context of the story, but she reminds me of one problem with this anthology: there aren’t many women in it. Of the eighteen stories, only five have female protagonists, and there are only six female authors. Most of the male-protagonist stories don’t have major female characters. The apocalypse, it seems, is considered to be a mostly male affair.

This is particularly noticeable in one of my two least favourite stories, [Pandemonium] by Andy Remic (the actual title is written in a script that my computer won’t copy). The story has some of the least interesting characters. There are three men – a nerd, a hulking goon, and a ferrety goon. Then there’s a hot blonde woman, whose job it is to whine, hang on the hulking goon’s arm, and look hot. But that’s not the only reason I disliked this story. It’s a rather unimaginative portrayal of the basic fires-of-hell-on-earth scenario. Several of the stories use it, but I found Remic’s to be the least engaging, with too much cheap gore. It was the first story I disliked, and marked the point where the anthology took a dip – the middle is rather middling.

“At the Sign of the Black Dove” by Lou Morgan is my other least favourite. It appears to be about a group of people drinking themselves into oblivion and waking up to find that the world is ending. Worst hangover ever? Meh.

“Closer” by Osgood Vance takes place in a world about to die, where most people have already been claimed by heaven or hell. The remainder are essentially the most average people on earth in terms of both skill and morality. I actually really liked this concept, but Vance uses it to tell a story about a baseball match – a group of Americans’ last stab at a bit of joy before they are all consumed by darkness. It makes sense – if you think about being average in terms of skill, then sport would be one of the things you’d think about – but I’ve never been interested in baseball and the story isn’t kind to non-fans, with its name-dropping and technical details about scoring.

There are three stories which weren’t bad, or even average, but just didn’t do anything for me – “The Last Man” by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (although, notably, ‘the last man’ is a female cyborg), “The Immaculate Particle” by Charlie Human and “Postapocalypse” by Sam Wilson. Each of them actually have interesting ideas – the cyborg, vanishing city blocks in “The Immaculate Particle” and apocalypse via postmodern thought in “Postapocalypse” but for reasons that are probably entirely subjective none of these stories left much of an impression.

In contrast, there are a couple of stories I wanted to single out for being more creative than others. They’re not necessarily better, but I liked the ways they differed from the norm. “The Architect of Hell” and “OMG GTFO” both use alternative narrative forms – letters in the former (not groundbreaking, I know, but it stood out) and media excerpts in the latter.

“Sadak In Search of the Waters of the Oblivion” by Archie Black disturbed me more than the visions of hell and burning. It’s set in a world ravaged by climate change where the earth hasn’t died (some landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful) but is horrifically hostile to humans. A research team heads out on an expedition, only to find themselves constantly assaulted by insects and micro-organisms, wading through a swamp and forced to sleep in it so they never get dry. Bugs nest in the flesh of the humans, horses and dogs in the team, their bodies rot while they’re still alive and the pain drives them mad. It’s heartbreaking and utterly revolting; if predictions of starvation isn’t enough to scare people into taking climate change seriously, then this would.

“Deluge” by Kim-Lakin Smith, inspired by the painting The Eve of the Deluge also features a post apocalyptic world ravaged by climate change, but in this case they’re about to experience a second apocalypse – a flood. Eve, the daughter of a pirate philosopher and a ‘weather witch’ in her own right, realises that the flood is coming, and tries to warn her society, a city built on a dried-up ocean floor. But, as with Noah, no one believes her. It’s only by turning to the pirate aspects of her heritage that she’s able to find salvation.

“A Private Viewing” by Scott K. Andrews is the only story besides “The Architect of Hell” that actually uses John Martin’s artwork in the plot. This story is not about the apocalypse itself, but suggests that the paintings themselves are apocalyptic forces inspiring unrest or madness. In the novel a man is forced to sit and stare at one of the paintings for hours every night and it gradually unhinges his mind.

After my interest had waned midway, I was hoping that the editors had saved a really great story to end the anthology. I wasn’t disappointed. “Not the End of the World” by Sarah McDougall is a poignant story set in Germany in WW2; or at least it seems to be. It follows a small group of tenants living in a house where ghosts from the war occasionally appear. It’s sad, but brave and hopeful; an elegant note on which to close the book.

Overall Pandemonium is a strong collection; I wished I’d read it earlier so I could review it while it was still in print. On the other hand, this also seems to be the year of the short story for me. seldom paid them much attention in the past but suddenly I’m reading or listening to at least one every weekday. It’s given me fresh appreciation for this form of fiction, so in that sense maybe it’s good that I waited until now to read this. It’s a pity that it’s out of print, but get a copy if you can, or see if you can find some of the stories elsewhere. They’re all quite short (except for the last) and most of them are worth the diversion.

Review of Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell

Title: Murder as a Fine Art
Author: David Morrell
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Published: 7 May 2013
Genre: historical, crime, mystery, metafiction
Source: NetGalley
Rating: 6/10

London, 1854. A killer steps out onto to the streets to create a masterpiece of murder, a perfectly planned tableau of horror designed to evoke great pity and utter terror. His work is a realisation of the gruesome essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” by Thomas De Quincey, which details the brutal Ratcliffe Highway murders “that terrorised both London and all of England in 1811″ but portrays them as a work of art.

Thomas De Quincey himself is in London with his daughter Emily, promoting his books because he desperately needs money. De Quincey became famous – or infamous – with his autobiography Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, detailing his addiction to laudanum – a combination of 90% alcohol and 10% opium that in Victorian times was commonly administered as a painkiller, even to children and babies. De Quincey’s addiction is partly responsible for his literary success – he claims that laudanum opens up other realities, showing him new perspectives that he puts into his writing.

But it’s also affected his health and he currently drinks enough to kill several people. Considered by many to be a degenerate, he’s the first person that Detective Ryan and Constable Becker of Scotland Yard suspect. But as Emily – a strong, outspoken woman – points out, her father is too old and frail to go around murdering entire families. In fact, De Quincey might be part of the murderer’s plans – he and Emily are staying in London at the expense of a mysterious benefactor who lured De Quincey with the promise of resolving a very personal mystery for him. And of course, the murderer has been inspired by De Quincey’s writing.

Although Ryan and Becker are shocked by De Quincey’s laudanum addiction and more than a little horrified at his fascination with the murders, they are sensible enough to see past De Quincey’s reputation and Victorian sensibilities. With De Quincey and Emily’s help they hunt down the master serial killer whose unbelievable acts of violence are reducing London to a state of terrified chaos.

Murder as a Fine Art is a metafictional intersection between historical fiction and commercial crime thriller. Morrell’s inspiration comes from the “novel of sensation”, a literary trend that was surprisingly popular in the conservative Victorian era, bringing the darkness of Gothic fiction into the homes and neighbourhoods of ordinary citizens, as he explains in his introduction. And that’s what this novel does, placing a particularly violent killer in the midst of London’s society. It’s full of historical trivia and passages describing the scene – the “notoriously thick fogs” composed of mist and smoke, the noise of farm animals amidst the sound of carriages – and although Morrell tends to reply heavily on info dumps, I found them quite interesting. The novel also offers the satisfaction of unfailingly good protagonists (even De Quincey’s laudanum addiction is useful) chasing after an irredeemably evil villain.

It’s all very black and white, but I didn’t mind as far as the good guys were concerned. While I prefer twisted heroes, sometimes it’s comforting to have the fantasy of smart, dedicated people always doing the right thing and sacrificing themselves for the greater good, barely undermined by their weaknesses. De Quincey’s the troubled genius, the one whose best equipped to track down the murderer but also so incapacitated by addiction that he could be an easy target. He wasn’t quite as memorable as I expected him to be – he’s the major historical figure driving the narrative after all – but he’s likable and amusingly snarky at times. Detective Ryan is a committed policeman, but he’s Irish and he has to struggle against the prejudice that tends to arise when the Londoners spot his red hair (his deliberately coarse appearance doesn’t help either). At one point he is attacked by an angry mob that assumes that the murderer must be a foreigner and goes after Ryan when they see the colour of his hair.

Becker, who plays the good cop to Ryan’s bad cop, actually looks much more respectable than his superior. He’s so determined to earn the rank of Detective that he risks his life just to protect a set of footprints that Ryan asks him to guard.  Emily is particularly charming as a forthright, practical woman despite Victorian constraints imposed upon women. One of the most memorable things about her character is her very practical decision to wear “bloomers” under her dress instead of the complicated and very heavy whalebone structure that respectable women don. The bloomers allow Emily to move easily but are considered scandalous because it means the movement of her legs is visible under her dress. Emily doesn’t care; she chooses function and comfort over silly sensibilities. The downside to her character is that she’s the ‘exceptional woman’ and the only interesting female character. Nevertheless, she was my favourite.

I was less pleased with the irredeemably evil villain. The fact that he’s thoroughly evil doesn’t bother me; it’s the way he’s progressively degraded as the story progresses. At the beginning, the artist is ruthlessly organised and controlled, but also able to think on his feet and adapt to unforeseen circumstances. His justifications for the murders are ‘pure’ – it’s not about revenge or monetary gain, but something more philosophical. He’s enacting and enhancing De Quincey’s rendering of the Ratcliffe Highway murders, in a ways that evoke the greatest level of pity and sorrow, thereby throwing society into tumult.

In his first set of murders, he chooses a shopkeeper and his family because of how sad and unfair it is that innocents and honest, hardworking people should be killed so horribly. He closes all the doors in the house so that whoever comes in will uncover a series of horrific sights one by one. He knows that the community will be driven to panic by the apparent senselessness of the crime; anyone could be the next victim when its got nothing to do with money or revenge. Considering all this, the murders do seem like artworks in a way, and the murderer like an artist.

Once the artist’s identity is revealed however (or once you guess; it becomes increasingly obvious), his image starts to deteriorate. His motives are muddied by personal obsessions. His intellect and slick control are too easily undermined by our unfailingly smart and noble protagonists. He becomes boring. I often see this trend in mainstream film, probably to cater to a longing to see evil fail under the forces of good – a previously powerful villain is reduced to a pathetic, desperate mad man. That’s understandable, but I don’t find it particularly satisfying because I love a good villain. I love it when they’re highly intelligent and focused. Even when I expect or want them to be defeated I don’t want them reduced to fumbling dopes just so the heroes can kick just them in the teeth.

But, as I said, this is still a commercial crime thriller; it’s not going to be unconventional. And as commercial crime thrillers go, it’s not bad at all, with its well-researched historical setting, social critiques, and metafictional intersections. It’s a quick fun read, but with substance. Recommended, if you’re looking for a strong crime thriller.

Up for Review: The Execution of Noa P. Singleton

The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver (Crown Publishing)

NetGalley Blurb:

A beguiling debut novel about the stories we tell ourselves to survive, the scars that never fade and the things we choose to call the truth.

Noa P. Singleton speaks not a word in her own defense throughout a brief trial that ends with a jury finding her guilty of first-degree murder. Ten years later, a woman who will never know middle age, she sits on death row in a maximum security penitentiary, just six months away from her execution date.

Seemingly out of the blue, she is visited by Marlene Dixon, a high-powered Philadelphia attorney who is also the heartbroken mother of the woman Noa was imprisoned for killing. She tells Noa that she has changed her mind about the death penalty and Noa’s sentence, and will do everything in her considerable power to convince the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison – if Noa will finally reveal what led her to commit her crime.

Noa and Marlene become inextricably linked through the law, shared sentiments of guilt, and irreversible mistakes in an unapologetic tale of love, anguish, and deception that is as unpredictable as it is magnificently original.

The Execution of Noa P. Singleton is Silver’s debut novel and will be published on 11 June 2013 by Crown Publishing.

Links

Goodreads
Crown Publishing
The novel at Random House (including an excerpt)

Buy a copy: Amazon | The Book Depository

About the Author

Elizabeth L. Silver holds a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and a JD from Temple University Beasley School of Law. She has taught ESL in Costa Rica, worked in book publishing in New York, and was an adjunct professor of English composition and literature at Drexel University and St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She has also worked as a Briefing and Research Attorney for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin, and is licensed to practice law in the state of California. - author’s website

Website

Twitter: @ElizLSilver
Facebook
Goodreads

Review of Twin-Bred by Karen A. Wyle

Title: Twin-Bred
Series: Twin-Bred
Author: Karen A. Wyle
Publisher: self-published
Published: 13 October 2011
Genre: science fiction
Source: eARC from the author
Rating: 4/10

When considering the possibility of alien contact, I worry how humanity will behave. As a species, we have frequently proven to be intolerant or hostile when confronted with difference (of race, gender, culture, nationality etc.). Sf has frequently used the alien as a metaphor for the other, exposing and critiquing modes of prejudice and oppression. Less socially conscious tales often reveal our assumptions about the other; consider the stereotype of aliens kidnapping humans for experiments or how many sf stories are about violent alien invaders, portraying other intelligent species as our enemies.

Twin-Bred by Karen A. Wyle is a case of humans behaving badly towards an alien whose motives and culture they do not understand because they can’t or won’t speak to them. It’s an almost embarrassing portrayal of close-minded people encountering a race of technologically inferior beings who might turn hostile.

In the novel, a human colony has been living on the planet Tofarn for 70 years. They share the world with the indigenous Tofa, a race of inscrutable four-armed aliens who don’t have any facial features except a blank pair of eyes. The humans do not know how to communicate with the Tofa, and after seven decades of co-habitation the two races still don’t understand each other. So far, this hasn’t been too problematic and the Tofa didn’t seem accepting of the human presence on their planet. But every now and then a conflict arises: the Tofa pack up and leave a village for reasons the humans cannot discern; they complain that humans are shaking hands in public or wearing the colour blue; they make a noise to prevent the humans sleeping at night.

Mara, an ambitious but emotionally dysfunctional young scientist, comes up with a solution: breeding human and Tofa twins. They will not have any genetic relationship; instead, a host mother (human or Tofa) will be implanted with both a human and a Tofa foetus. Mara believes that sharing a womb will forge a unique bond between the twins, finally enabling the two species to communicate. The humans will be able to learn about the Tofa, and the twins will be trained to resolve inter-species conflicts.

Mara’s idea is the result of her bond with Levi, her own twin who died in utero. Mara has secretly kept him alive in her mind as an entity who is also her only friend and confidant. Mara even names her twin project after him: the Long-Term Emissary Viviparous Initiative or L.E.V.I.

The Project gets government backing, probably because the government officials all have their own agendas, hoping to use the twins and their abilities to gain power and influence. Even the Tofa seem to be plotting something, not that any of the humans have the means of finding out what they’re up to.

Now that you have the gist of the plot, I’ll return to the start and begin unpacking all the ludicrously implausible aspects of this story. Humans lived for 70 YEARS on Tofarn without talking to the Tofa. SEVENTY YEARS. There are actually villages and towns where the two species live together, but still, nothing. Granted, the Tofa are not what you’d call sociable, but the overwhelming impression I got is that humans didn’t even try. It seemed like they took one look at the Tofa’s featureless faces, and gave up any hope of conversation. A couple of them might have tried speaking loudly in English.

But guess what: the Tofa have mouths and they can speak. A little girl named Laura learns this when she befriends a young Tofa who tells her his name. Her father tells her that Tofa mouths are just hidden by membranes. She tells her friend Veda this and introduces her to the Tofa. They play together until the Tofa’s father comes and breaks up the friendship. Laura, her father, and Veda never mention this groundbreaking information to anybody, and no one reports a similar experience.

So humanity plods along in total ignorance. Apparently they left Earth without realising they might encounter beings who aren’t exactly like humans. Many of them are outright racist and a couple behave like rednecks whose ideal social gathering would be a lynch mob. It’s been seventy years and the sight or close proximity of the Tofa still disgusts and disturbs them. The Tofa basically allowed them to set up a very comfortable colony on their planet, and all the humans can do is complain about how weird and icky the aliens are.

Enter Mara with L.E.V.I. Because when people don’t even want to look at the Tofa you can try implanting human women with their foetuses. Humanity goes from making virtually no effort at communication to setting up an extremely complex, long-term, expensive Project based on an “uncertain and speculative” hypothesis from a scientist with serious mental problems.There are so many holes in this Project it’s easier for me to put a few in point form:

• Humans know NOTHING about Tofa biology. They haven’t even realised that the Tofa have mouths. They don’t know how Tofa reproduce. How could anyone possibly conceive of a Project that involves implanting Tofa and human mothers with embryos of both species?
• Most humans seem disgusted or at least disturbed by the Tofa, so why is it so easy to get host mothers who are willing to carry an alien foetus?
• The humans can’t speak Tofa and the Tofa can’t speak English so they have to explain the Project using drawings with stick figures. WTF?
• If the humans can explain something as complex as the Project using stick figures, then why didn’t they try this before or after?
• The Tofa are technologically inferior to the humans, so how are they able to harvest and store embryos for the human scientists to use?

But whatever. The Project continues as (badly) planned, with a few hiccups like foetuses dying or human mothers freaking out when they see alien babies inside them during the ultrasounds (were they not briefed?). Nevertheless, a bunch of healthy human-Tofa twins are born.

The Tofa children are taught to speak English, which they do as easily as the human children. And to everyone’s shock, the Tofa mothers learn to speak English too, picking it up while living in the Project compound. If communicating was so simple why have none of the Tofa done it before?! Yes, they aren’t generally in favour of speaking to humans, but if the mothers are so willing to do it, I find it impossible that they were the first. The ending reveals additional reasons for the Tofa remaining aloof, but it’s unconvincing and just leaves you with another slew of questions.

It’s impossible for the humans to truly learn the Tofa language, because it has a telepathic component, so humans are conveniently exempt from having to bother. But you’d think that the human scientists would spend every waking moment learning everything they can about Tofa biology and culture. They don’t. Or at least they don’t seem to. Every revelation happens by chance, usually when the twins are playing together and one of the adults notices something unusual and asks for an explanation. It’s perhaps not surprising when you consider what some of the staff members are like – even after years spent working on the Project they still squirm at the sight of human and Tofa children sitting together, or seeing a Tofa come up to speak to them. Considering the resources that must have gone into the Project, it seems almost fruitless.

Even more so when the twin-bred are actually sent out on their first assignments. Up to this point, the Project remained top secret (highly unlikely, given their sloppy security measures). You can imagine what happens when the the results of a human/alien breeding program are introduced as surprise communication specialists to a world full of people who don’t like aliens. FAIL.

There are loads of other plot issues, but there’s not much point getting into them; you get the picture. I’ll move on to the writing, characters and worldbuilding.

The writing is fine and seems to have been properly edited, but the style or structure is very strange – Wyle tells the entire story in brief sections with more POVs than I could possibly remember. Most of these are only a few paragraphs long; the longest scenes are maybe 2 or 3 pages. The result is that the story moves very quickly because each little section is like a report on an issue or development in the plot, which covers 30-40 years. You could argue that this very perfunctory narration suits the pseudo-scientific plot, but it’s also completely… um, alienating. It struck me as a means of writing a novel if you were focussing on the plot but weren’t in the mood for things like character development or worldbuilding.

There are far too many characters, quite possibly more than I’ve encountered in any novel. Many of them make such minuscule contributions to the plot that it doesn’t matter if you instantly forget who they are. Sometimes Wyle randomly throws in a new character with a name, job title and a cup of coffee just so they can make a minor point about something. There’s almost no characterisation except to distinguish Tofa children from their human twins and to emphasise how socially inept Mara is. She’s actually the only character with a personality, but at the same time I found her thoroughly unlikeable.

The worldbuilding is equally flat. Tofarn is the most un-alien alien planet I’ve ever come across. It’s like a human society on Earth with a scattering of aliens thrown in. We hear very little or absolutely nothing about the flora, fauna, climate, geography, etc. of Tofarn. Whatever is mentioned has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. The humans are still in the process of reproducing what they had on Earth (they don’t have the resources to farm cows yet, for example), but most of the time you could forget that they were on another planet. Their society is almost identical to an affluent American town. They eat chocolate and muffins, wear leather, keeps cats as pets. The only major differences are the technological advancements like hover cars and the tablets everyone carries around in lieu of cellphones.  It makes perfect sense that they brought the necessary plant seeds, animal DNA and tech from Earth, but how is it that everything works perfectly on Tofa? Did they not have to make any adjustments? How do the humans even know that the planet is called Tofa?

Even though I didn’t like the way the humans behaved or how mysterious the Tofa are as an alien race, I can accept that as the tough situation within which the characters must struggle. One of the more interesting aspects of the plot was the way some people viewed the Project as a means of customising the Tofa, making them more acceptable to humans. Clearly the novel is meant to function as a critique of intolerance, which is good, although it ends up being quite defeatist about the issue. But I can accept that too – we can’t always have he endings we want. What I can’t ignore are all those other flaws. It’s just so deficient in the speculative part inherent in speculative fiction.

Up for Review: Murder as a Fine Art

David Morrell, the creator of Rambo, has published 29 novels, 6 works of non-fiction, and numerous short-stories and essays. His latest novel is a historical murder mystery featuring  real-life author Thomas de Quincey. I’ve never paid any attention to Rambo, but this sounds quite good.

Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell (Mulholland Books)

NetGalley blurb:

GASLIT LONDON IS BROUGHT TO ITS KNEES IN DAVID MORRELL’S BRILLIANT HISTORICAL THRILLER.

Thomas De Quincey, infamous for his memoir Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, is the major suspect in a series of ferocious mass murders identical to ones that terrorized London forty-three years earlier.

The blueprint for the killings seems to be De Quincey’s essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Desperate to clear his name but crippled by opium addiction, De Quincey is aided by his devoted daughter Emily and a pair of determined Scotland Yard detectives.

In Murder as a Fine Art, David Morrell plucks De Quincey, Victorian London, and the Ratcliffe Highway murders from history. Fogbound streets become a battleground between a literary star and a brilliant murderer, whose lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.

 

Murder as a Fine Art was published on 7 May 2013 by Mulholland Books.

Links
Goodreads
Mulholland Books
Conversation with Morrell and De Quincey scholar Robert Morrisson
Pretty much everything else is covered by the novel’s page on Morrell’s website. Click through for links to the book trailer, interviews with Morrell about the novel, and buying options.

About the Author
David Morrell is the critically acclaimed author of First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created. He holds a Ph. D. in American literature from Penn State and was a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa. His numerous New York Times bestsellers include the classic spy trilogy The Brotherhood of the Rose (the basis for the only television mini-series to premier after a Super Bowl), The Fraternity of the Stone, and The League of Night and Fog. An Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity nominee, Morrell is the recipient of three Bram Stoker awards from the Horror Writers Association as well as the prestigious lifetime Thriller Master Award from the International Thriller Writers’ organization. His writing book, The Successful Novelist, discusses what he has learned in his four decades as an author. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Review of The Bone Dragon by Alexia Casale

Title: The Bone Dragon
Author: Alexia Casale
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 2 May 2013
Genre: YA, fantasy (sort of)
Source: NetGalley
Rating: 7/10

For four years, 14-year-old Evie has been living with broken ribs after being abused by her grandparents. Although she was adopted by Amy and Paul, who proved to be loving, devoted parents, it took three years before she trusted them enough to tell them about the pain and what it meant. When the novel opens she wakes up in hospital after her operation. As a memento, the doctor gives her the piece of rib that they removed. When she goes home to recover, Evie’s Uncle Ben suggests she make something out of the piece of rib, and she decides on a dragon – her ideal pet. Uncle Ben carves the bone into shape and Evie spends her recovery time etching scales and other details into the bone.

She only wishes her dragon could be real: “my chest was tight with longing. If I had a dragon, I’d never be powerless again”. And, inexplicably, Evie’s desperate wish comes true – the dragon comes to life at night and becomes her tiny but powerful guardian. Under the dragon’s direction, Evie sneaks out of the house at night and roams the almost mystical marshland of her neighbourhood. It is the dragon’s way of helping her heal and come to terms with the abuse and neglect she has suffered. But the dragon has a mysterious plan too, and he’s guiding Evie in the preparations for it. There is unfinished business that Evie cannot handle on her own, and that Paul, Amy and Ben could never handle for her.

At first glance, The Bone Dragon looks like a fantasy novel, but in truth it’s more a psychological drama that walks a fine line between fantasy and realism. At the borderline is the dragon – we never know if it really comes to life or if it’s only a product of Evie’s imagination and desperation. Initially it seems real, and indeed the simplest interpretation of this story is that the dragon comes to life. But as the story progresses you realise that Evie isn’t doing anything that she couldn’t do by herself. The dragon is certainly real to her in some way, but it might simply be a psychological tool, a means of pushing herself do dangerous, daring things, or another persona that does things the original Evie can’t or won’t. Whether she’s conscious of this psychological split is debatable; both possibilities are equally unsettling.

It does however, make The Bone Dragon one of the most sophisticated and psychologically compelling YA novels I’ve encountered. As I read, and then as I went through my review notes and re-considered the story, I was increasingly impressed by the psychology of Evie’s character. Some of the flaws that had bothered me actually became less significant as I admired the novel’s strengths.

Let me get the flaws out of the way. Or rather, just the flaw that bothered me the most: the night trips are pretty boring. They have the potential to be the most beautiful and exciting aspect of the book, but most of the time nothing happens on these brief adventures. You see, the dragon keeps his plan secret from Evie, and the narrative never reveals what kinds of preparations they’re making (although if you pay attention to other parts of the story you can guess). Even Evie gets frustrated with his secrecy:

‘What I want is for you not to speak in riddles the whole time. We’ve passed the point when it seemed clever and reached the bit where it’s just tedious,’

But the Dragon also tells Evie that it’s it’s part of his ‘contract’ with her that she can’t know everything and has to trust him. This sounds a bit silly; it’s more like the author’s plot device for keeping the big plan a mystery. The consequence is that, for the reader, it seems like the characters are just walking around. The only things driving the narrative here are the descriptions of the seemingly magical nightscape and a little mystery that Evie stumbles upon: Ben and Paul are going out on Friday nights to do something dangerous. They don’t want to tell Amy about it, but Ben thinks they should tell Evie, so what could it be? This question doesn’t carry enough intrigue to make the night trips more interesting though, and the descriptions of the landscape and atmosphere are wasted when there’s no action to accompany them. So my mind tended to wander as well, and I struggled to concentrate during these parts.

I was waiting for the story to get back to the real world, to Evie’s life and mind. At first we see her as a damaged but recovering young girl. Our first impressions are dominated by the overwhelming pain of the slowly healing wound in her side. For a while, she can’t move without pain, and needs Amy’s help to shower or walk up the stairs. Even when she recovers enough to go back to school she has to be careful.

Her parents arrange for one of her teachers, Ms Winters, to have regular counselling sessions with Evie, and these are very illuminating for her character; I looked forward to them. But even though the first-person narration puts us right in Evie’s head, we are never given the specifics of what happened to her; there are enough hints to guess at the facts, but Evie withholds the details:

Some things should never be said. Not out loud in clear, simple words. You talk around them. You leave gaps and blanks. You use other words and talk in curves and arcs for the worst things because you need to keep them like mist. Words are dangerous. Like a spell, if you name the mist, call out all of the words that describe it sharp and clear, you turn it solid, into something that no one should ever hold in their hands. Better that it stays like water, slipping between your fingers.

Our understanding of the abuse comes from its effect on Evie’s body and mind. We learn how much she hates her mother Fiona, who recently died of cancer. As far as Evie’s concerned, Fiona got what she deserved; she wasn’t the one who abused Evie, but she allowed it to happen because she was weak and cowardly.

Not surprisingly, Evie’s experiences have made her incredibly cynical. She’s given up on God and prayer because that never helped her when she needed it most. She knows that life just goes on even when it’s more unjust or unbearable than seems possible: “there are infinite places beyond unbearable”. As her friend Lynne later says, Evie also tends to expect the worst of everyone. She hasn’t told her two friends the truth about what happened, assuming it’ll just become humiliating gossip. She assumed Amy and Paul would never really treat her as their child. She was shocked to find that they loved her and never acted as if she could be returned, even when she made them angry.

The love that Amy, Paul and Ben show for Evie offers a comforting balance for the harsher parts of the narrative, especially Evie’s anger and cynicism. Nevertheless, as the story continues, you start to realise that Evie is perhaps more damaged that you initially assumed, and her narration becomes increasingly unreliable. This becomes particularly noticeable with the issue of Sonny Rawlins, a school bully who seems to focus on Evie. Evie hates him and understandably so, but there are few details that blur the issue. For example, Evie tells Ms Winters that Sonny Rawlins has been throwing eggs at their house. This comes as a complete surprise to the reader – it’s the first time she mentions something so upsetting. It suggests that Evie might be lying, making a stronger case against Sonny Rawlins. And believe me, this isn’t the only glimpse you’ll get of her vindictive streak.

Evie knows the world is unjust, but she still wants payback:

It’s all bound up with how angry, angry, angry I am that I never get to hurt anyone half as much as they hurt me.

 

 Usually Amy would tell me stuff about ‘an eye for an eye making us all blind’ and I know Gandhi said it and it was a smart thing to say if we want the world to be a good place. Only it doesn’t feel like that. And the worst bit is that I know that if I did make Sonny Rawlins pay, he’d never dare to even look at me wrong again. It wouldn’t be like the time with the flowers, or the cigarettes, or every other little thing since, when my pushing back against his attempts to hurt me have only made him try harder. It wouldn’t just be a little victory in the moment, making sure his hatefulness backfires [...] No, if I ever really made him pay, that would be the end of it.

 

I don’t want Paul and Amy fighting this battle for me because they don’t understand how much I want Sonny Rawlins to pay. They’d never make him sorry enough. They just don’t have it in them.  And I love them for it. I love that they don’t know how wonderful, and terrible, it is to be powerful. I couldn’t  bear for them to lose that… that innocence because of me.

 

The issue of innocence is a particularly interesting one, and I found it to be one of the most memorable parts of the novel. Evie actually considers Amy, Paul and Ben to be innocent in ways that she is not, because innocence is not what most people say it is:

People get it wrong when they talk about innocence: they think it’s something to do with ignorance about the facts of sex and all the nasty things that happen in the world. But facts don’t change people: it’s understanding how the facts feel that does. Only stupid people think innocence is some weird state of not-knowing that children grow out of once they start to understand innuendo. Or maybe it’s not that they’re stupid: maybe it’s just that in some weird grown-up way they are still innocent. Because otherwise they’d know better: they’d understand, even if they couldn’t really explain it, that innocence is so much bigger. It’s every aspect of the life you have before you know how precious and wonderful it is to be ignorant. It’s all the time you spend rushing, rushing to know, never expecting to find grief waiting beside knowledge.

 

It’s weird and sad that this kid is concerned about the innocence of her parents. At 14 years old, she’s frustrated that “at their age” they can still think the way they do. They can enjoy a kind of blissful ignorance that was taken away from her long ago. It creates a terrible conflict within her. On the one hand she’s angry and hateful that they’re so innocent; she wants them to lose that innocence so they can better understand her and share her pain. It’s not fair that they don’t have to shoulder the burden of understanding. On the other hand, she loves them too much to truly want this for them. After all, they have suffered too: Amy and Paul lost their son, Ben lost his wife, and Amy and Ben lost their parents, all in one car crash. Still, that’s not the same thing as what Evie had to go through.

Reflecting on all this and other things, I was struck by how dark this novel. It’s not something you notice at first glance. After all, it’s not bleak. Evie is strong, she’s recovering, she’s got a wonderful family. The plot isn’t depressing: there are many happy moments with Evie’s friends and family, we see her work through her problems, and of course she has her magical dragon. And as I mentioned, you don’t relive the abuse with Evie. But there are grim, brutal things that very quietly crawl in under your skin. Like Amy’s slightly pathological tendency to worry about her family’s safety and the fact that you would never know she and Paul had a son because they keep every trace of him locked away in a cupboard. Or Evie’s burning anger at Sonny Rawlins (anyone who’s been bullied could empathise, but Evie has an edge that makes it just a little bit disturbing). Her hatred of her mother Fiona. Then there’s the ending, which I think would could spark and interesting discussion because that’s where the issue of the dragon’s reality becomes the most important.

I think these things creep up on you because it’s not a dramatic book. It just calmly gets on with its very serious, painful and even shocking subject matter, while making room for the positive, heartwarming stuff too. And then it stays with you for a while after you’ve finished. I like Evie more than a lot of YA characters I’ve read, even though she scares me a little. The Bone Dragon is also a more mature and emotionally complex kind of YA than the kind I normally find myself reading, and I appreciate that. Not that I necessarily prefer all my books to be grim, but it’s good to see the genre handling something with such gravity too.

The SA Fiction Collection: Shark’s Egg

The first post for my SA Fiction Collection reminds me why I love second-hand bookstores. It was also the first book I bought on my recent visit to South Africa. I spent two days in Joburg staying with Lu from Sugar and Snark, and she took me to Outer Limits, a comic book store in Melville. Among other geekery like games and figurines, Outer Limits has a small selection of new and second-hand genre fiction, and I spotted this slim, obscure title on the shelves:

Shark’s Egg, published by Kwela Books in 2000, is the debut novel by Henrietta Rose-Innes. You may have heard of her recent novel Ninevah, or come across one of her short stories, which have appeared in numerous publications. The somewhat sloppy cover of Shark’s Egg doesn’t really appeal to me, so it’s a good thing I was familiar with her name. The cover suggests fantasy, but the blurb implies more realist fiction. I’ll have to see for  myself.

Shark’s Egg by Henrietta Rose-Innes (2000, Kwela Books)

Goodreads Blurb:
A dark coming-of-age story set in Cape Town, Shark’s Egg tells the story of Anna’s schoolgirl friendship with the magnetic, destructive Leah, and their ambiguous adult relationship. Alan, Anna’s first lover, becomes the focus of a moral and sexual struggle between them as adults – played out against the menacing backdrop of the sea.

Links:
Goodreads
Kwela Books
Buy a Copy: Exclusive Books | Kalahari | Graffiti Boeke (Afrikaans website) | Amazon |

 

About the Author
Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South African writer based in Cape Town. Her novel Nineveh was published by Random House Struik in 2011, following a short-story collection, Homing (2010), and two earlier novels: Shark’s Egg (2000) and The Rock Alphabet (2004).

In 2012, her short story ‘Sanctuary’ took second place in the BBC International Short Story Competition. Nineveh was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the M-Net Literary Award. In 2008, Henrietta won the Caine Prize for African Writing, for which she was shortlisted in 2007. Also in 2007, she was awarded the South African PEN Literary Award. Shark’s Egg was shortlisted for the 2000 M-Net Literary Award.

Her short stories have appeared in various publications, including Granta, AGNI and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011. A collection of short pieces, translated into German, was published in September 2008 as Dream Homes.

She is currently Donald Gordon Creative Arts Fellow at the the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA), University of Cape Town.

Website 
Twitter: @HenriettaRI
Goodreads