Tobias Buckell, Sly Mongoose

Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell

Sly Mongoose is Tobias Buckell's third novel, following in the series after Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin. Each novel works mostly as a stand alone novel, but they are related and chronological in nature.

Sly Mongoose was a very satisfying novel. While coming in at a little less than 320 pages, the story is strongly developed, and very nuanced. The characters are well developed, and the settings become characters themselves. Personally, I think that this novel would make a remarkable movie.

The story picks up some generations after the end of Ragamuffin. The story once again features a good mixture of politics, philosophy, and action. Pepper is once again one of the primary PoVs, and fans of the previous novels might know what to expect. Let's just say that Pepper kicks butt, takes names, and has to deal with the consequences. While on a mission for the Dread Council, Pepper gets caught up in a plot hatched by a competing human faction. He ends up stranded on a remote planet and faced with a Species Extinction threat. What happens next is a white-knuckled read through the night sort of story.

Besides zeppelin air battles, and floating cities, we also get scifi zombies. Yep, scifi zombies. If you're interested check out Larry's interview with Tobias Buckell. I would classify the novel as something of a scifi/steampunk/horror.

In my opinion, Sly Mongoose is Buckell's best novel to date. It is entertaining, well-crafted, and surprisingly deep. The story is definitely amongst a handful of others on my favorite novels of the year list. It would greatly benefit all readers to start with Crystal Rain and read from there. However, I think a person could pick up Sly Mongoose and enjoy it without knowing the back story.

Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell

TOR Publishing

New Interview with Tobias Buckell

Ever since I read Crystal Rain two years ago, I have paid close attention to Caribbean-born author Tobias Buckell's stories. I have read each of his three published novels to date (and I hope to have a review up in the very near future of his third Xenowealth Series novel, Sly Mongoose) and a couple of his short stories and I have enjoyed each and every one of them. Part of this enjoyment comes from Buckell's ability to weave in thematic elements, - post-colonialism, how humans tend to categorize and demonize other groups that differ from them in some form or fashion, among others - almost seamlessly into a concise, fast-moving story.

Although I have assisted in two previous interviews with Buckell, this is the first time I have done a full, solo interview with him directly. Hopefully, the questions here will build upon those earlier interviews and provide readers with even more information to consider.

You recently published your third novel, Sly Mongoose. How would you describe for someone new to your work how the three novels fit together?

Well, each novel is a bit of a jigsaw piece, with each novel illuminating a new world and some new characters. As a result, hopefully, they're very easy to slide into regardless of where you start with my books.

When pressed further, I describe Crystal Rain as a Caribbean Steampunk novel, Ragamuffin as Caribbean Space Opera, and Sly Mongoose is something of a mashup of the two above, with its low-tech floating cities that feature more crude tech, that exist side by side with very high technology speculation.

What about the zombies? I have seen many of the early reviews refer to how you came at that horror staple from a new perspective. How did you come to decide to include zombies in Sly Mongoose?

They are a horror staple, but I think I was riffing on Peter Watts. He had hard SF vampire in a novel, and I thought I'd better get the jump. I was also thinking a lot about what a techno-democracy might look like, vaguely zombie-ish, with it's inhabitants following the will of the group. The zombie collective intelligence became a foil for the techno-democracies in the book, a more extreme and depersonalized example.

If you read Slashdot with any regularity, for a long time whenever a new piece of computing hardware came out, the refrain was always "but can I make a Beowulf cluster with it?" This referring to parallel computing: hooking lots of tiny computers up together to make one big one.

When I thought about how I could use zombies in a novel that was SF, I thought "but can I make a Beowulf cluster with them?" The answer is in the book.

So in a sense it would be fair to say that the zombies are symbols for a social polity that has lost much in the way of individualism and individual personality?

I'd be willing to go on record for that, yeah :-) Though, there is still just this 'zombies are scary-cool, how can I make them work in a new way for a story and still get to play with some of the tropes of a zombie attack.'

In a previous interview, you talked about how it was your intent to explore the effects of violent conflict on bystanders. What sorts of conflict can one expect to see in Sly Mongoose?

I tend to feature some big explosions, clashes, and the sort. Sly Mongoose is no exception when I get around to featuring floating cities going up against each other, with hordes of fighting blimps buzzing around between them. But amidst that backdrop I really tried to show the consequences of people's actions, particularly with Pepper's decision in the first chapter to crash into one of the floating cities. The debris that falls off destroys a life, and Pepper ends up having to face up to that.

Would it be fair to say that some of these "consequences" that you mention deal not just with specific character action, but might also be a commentary of sorts on how humans have treated each other over the years? I recall a conversation between Timas and Skizzit that seemed to touch upon this.

Timas and Skizzit have a go around. Are you responsible for the acts of your forefathers? Does sin run in blood? What effect does history have on today? Consequences do ripple on down through history, and yet, there is justifiable frustration from some that they are held accountable to their ancestor's actions. On the other hand, failing to recognize that someone else has been genuinely affected by ancestor activity, while you benefited, and not understanding the frustration, means that you'll likely continue to add tension to those consequences.

It's a very complex area, I tried to show the genuine consequences on all sides.

Although I'm certain it wasn't your intent to explore this (especially since the book was written prior to the present events), but could one make the case that this discussion that Timas and Skizzit have mirrors closely the fault lines in societies such as that of the United States, with its spotted history in regards to the treatment of various ethnic groups?

Maybe, though the precedents I was drawing from for inspiration were hundreds of years older. These conflicts play out amongst people and time over and over again over various lines.

In many of the reviews of Sly Mongoose that I have read, it seemed much of the focus was on the opener with Pepper. Who are some of the more "obscure" characters in Sly Mongoose that you believe readers might want to notice more?

I really loved writing Katerina. She was spunky and in control of her life, and remains pretty calm and centered throughout the book. I wanted to write her POV into the book, but it would have dragged the opening down that I wanted, so I made the heavy choice of keeping only to two POVs in this book. But she embodied the promise of techno-democracy and a sense of maturity that came with.

I guess it's political, but in much the same way that being alive makes on a political creature. The nature of democracy is complex, messy, and full of compromise. It's slow. And that understandably gets people upset. That's why dictators are so appealing, they offer fulfillment to a faction. Some democracies in the past have even voted dictators in, and in parts of the world right now democratic reforms are being pushed back by newly franchised middle classers because democracy is messy, slow, and the people are getting sick of constant compromise. I guess I wanted to explore some of that.

You can see Pepper's frustration with this when he constantly tries to goad people into action, and when he considers starting a revolt just so he can get stuff done.

I wrote my favorite piece of political dialogue in this, though, even though my politics are centrist and I resist current politics speechifying and don't really feel aligned to modern US politics.
That's when Katerina and Timas discuss the nature of techno-democracy, and why people should invest in running a government themselves, without a class of professional politicians.

I remember thinking when I read Ragamuffin that there was a sense of frustration being expressed about political blocs and the corruptive influences that delegated power could have on such groups as the League.

It isn't frustration, but more a realization that when people engage in 'ends justifies means' politicking they end up corrupting themselves. The revolution always starts with the best of intentions, but then complications ensue. For the good of the revolution, hard measures are taken, which lead to authoritarian measures. The League begins as a freedom movement, but gets bogged down in its hatred of aliens and its desire for all humans to be under one banner. By Sly Mongoose, they're willing to attack other humans for their unwillingness to accede to their policy, and have lost complete sight of what it was that got them started.

You were nominated for a Prometheus Award some months ago for Ragamuffin. Since the Prometheus Award honors "libertarian fiction," how much would you say that some of your stories' themes would resonate with libertarians or other political/social groups?

I think the idea of voluntary and random techno-democracy might make Sly Mongoose worth the read for people, though I'm not espousing anything, just playing around with ideas.

You recently signed on to write a Halo tie-in novel that will be published in the near future. Some fans and writers have expressed mixed feelings regarding those who write in "shared universes."

I try to avoid religious arguments of faith about what is quality and what is not, other than to point out I work in SF/F, and have been hounded by people about writing 'real literature' because I chose the genre. Now some SF/F fans claim I'm not writing 'real SF/F.' Whatever. I didn't take on writing a HALO book for the money, there's not much money in writing fiction, to be honest. I make far more writing non-fiction: writing copy, cleaning works up, and writing articles. I took on the HALO book because I play an inordinate amount of HALO and dig on the universe a great deal.

Since going fulltime I've been offered some media tie in work, but I've turned it down because it hasn't been in areas that I geek out in (and to be honest once, even though it was a property I liked, I did turn down a piece of work because of a laughably small amount of money and no royalty).

When my wife heard I was considering the HALO book she knew I'd take it, just based on the fact I dug the game so much.

There are a handful of other properties that I love. If someone from Marvel called and said: could you do an X-man novel, I'd quite literally swoon. It's no different for my generation than someone playing in Shakespeare's worlds. Or fantasy novels and their obsessive Tolkien retreads. When you love something, it's fun to play there.

How did you approach writing a tie-in novel and what are your thoughts regarding the differences between writing in a shared universe and writing in one of your own creation?

It's not too different than writing a third book in a series, like I did for Sly Mongoose. You have to pay attention to what came before, keep good notes.

Since Halo: The Cole Protocol is coming out in late November, how would you describe the basic storyline for readers, particularly those who might be unfamiliar with the Halo universe?

While I did write the new Halo novel, as one writes all SF, so that it wouldn't leave new readers out in the cold, it is mainly aimed at Halo fans, so the following description would make more sense to anyone who's familiar with it. In Halo: The Cole Protocol I got to flesh out 'Gray Team,' a team of super soldiers clad in powered armor, who go behind the enemy lines of the Covenant, a group of theocratic aliens bent on wiping out humanity. Explosions and mayhem ensue...

You recently participated in the Metatropolis audio anthology. What was your role in that project and what can you tell readers/listeners to expect from your story there?

John Scalzi approached me, along with Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, and Karl Schroeder to each write a novella that would revolve around a shared setting for Audible. Other than setting deadlines, our brainstorming the idea was a pretty democratic thing, with Karl tossing out lots of cool ideas that we decided to run with. I'd written a story with Karl for Fast Forward 2 about near future environmental concerns, and it was cool to revisit this stuff. The story is a glimpse at a possible near-future Detroit, and a bunch of urban reclaimers who're trying to reform the city using flash mobs.

Sounds like a fascinating story! Was your approach toward writing an audio story any different than how you would approach a story intended to be read and not heard?

I faced two challenges here, when I set out to write this novella. One, I'd never written a novella. The closest in length I'd ever come was about half this story's length. Second, it was going to be audio, as you note. I decided to write the story in first person, which I've never done before. This was because in doing some experimenting with the first paragraphs, it sounded more natural to have a first person narrator doing the audio bit than third. This also then allowed me to finesse the info-dumps that come in a science fiction story by putting them in the character's 'voice' and not having it impact the flow of the story. Lastly, since I wasn't sure how the plot or pacing on a novella would work out, and I was worried about too much plot existing, writing it this way allowed me to compress bits with a narrator's summary in the event that things wound on too long. All of this was so that pace and flow would come across more naturally.

Lastly, the whole story was read aloud as I wrote it, section by section, so I could get a sense of what the delivery would be like.

Also, is there any chance of the Metatropolis anthology being released as a traditional book in the near future?

It's audio only for now.

Are there any other fiction projects on the horizon about which readers might be curious?

While it'll be hard for me to top 2008, with 2 books, the audio anthology, and a slew of short story sales, I am still on contract with Tor for 2 more novels.

Those two novels, are both planned on being part of the Xenowealth series or might one or both be set in other milieus?

We have ideas for both directions, we'll see how Sly Mongoose does and what the big picture looks like and make a call.


As someone who's been blogging for years, what sorts of effects, positive and negative alike, have you seen develop in your writing career as a result of you maintaining an online presence?

I've made a lot of friends, and acquired new readers. I've gotten work from it, as people are aware of who I am. I doubt I'd be making a living writing right now if it wasn't for it.

Over the past century, there have been many "trends" or "movements" in SF/F, such as the pulp writers, New Wave, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and New Weird among others. Have you seen any sort of new "scene" developing in the field recently and if so, what are its characteristics or authors involved in creating such a "scene"?

We seem to be going through a bit of a Cambrian explosion here. The number of titles on the shelves have exploded, and as a result there are a lot of new subgenres being tried out. It's really been a heady decade, I think, with an amazing wealth of new fiction exploding onto the scene. Whether it settles down into any one sort of pattern, or this trend reverses, I don't know, but any 'movement' that people have called out over the last 10 years has just been one of a large number of other movements. It's chaotic out there, and what comes out of that fertile mess will be interesting, I think.

Again, thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview, Tobias.

No problem. Thanks for interviewing me!

Early June Book Porn

It's been a while since I've posted some Book Porn, so here are 4 purchases and 5 Review Copies/ARCs that I've received in the past few weeks:

Here are the five review copies/ARCs that I received over the past couple of weeks. The first is the just-released (June 3rd) graphic novel, Out of Picture 2, which highlights the drawing and story talents of artists currently or formerly associated with Blue Sky Studios. I might review this one shortly; I certainly thought it was entertaining and very creative. Next is the ARC for Tobias Buckell's third novel (coming out in August), Sly Mongoose, which Buckell himself sent to me. Review later this month; I thought it was better than his first two efforts, which I enjoyed. The third book I just received yesterday and is by the late Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl, The Last Theorem. This book comes out August 5.

The MMPB on the bottom is Patricia Rosemoor & Marc Paoletti's The Last Vampire, and it is set to be released on June 24. And finally, the hardcover is Peter David's retelling of the Peter Pan story, Tigerheart. It goes on sale June 17th. I read it last week and found it to be an okayish tale, but it wasn't anything special.

These are my four most recent purchases. Bought, read, and enjoyed greatly Franz Kafka's The Trial, Flann O'Brien's The Complete Novels, and Naguib Mahfouz's Voices from the Other World: Ancient Egyptian Tales, and am currently reading the Spanish translation of Serbian author Goran Petrović's La Mano de la Buena Fortuna (The Hand of Good Fortune). Alas, there's no English translation of any of his work available at the moment, as I really think there are many here (especially those who've read and enjoyed the other authors in this photo) who would really enjoy this fine work.

More Book Porn later this month, perhaps.

Early thoughts on two upcoming releases

This past week, I received two ARCs. The first was from Random House and it was Lord Tophet by Gregory Frost, which concludes the story began in Shadowbridge. The second ARC I received from Tobias Buckell himself and it is the third serial installment in his stories about Pepper and other Ragamuffins, Sly Mongoose. While I will not be writing formal reviews until closer to each book's release date (late July for the Frost and I believe sometime in August for Buckell's), I thought I'd give just a few teaser reactions to each, for those who are curious about each author.


Lord Tophet is a slender book, shorter even than the 270 pages or so Shadowbridge. However, much more is revealed in these pages and Leodora/Jax's stories play a much more prominent role, as there is a dark, destructive force striding the spans. Frost has a nice twist on our own legenda, some of which is referred to directly in places, and the climatic scene was done quite nicely. Lord Tophet almost certainly will get a positive review from me when I sit down to write the full review in 5-6 weeks.



I am about 2/3 into Sly Mongoose right now and am enjoying it quite a bit. Buckell continues to develop his characters and if I'm not mistaken, Sly Mongoose might be his most "political" novel to date, although I use that term in the loosest of senses; it is not didactic or "preachy." As in his earlier novels, Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, there is an adolescent voice (Timas in this case) who serves as a focal point for the cultural conflicts that often are undercurrents in his novels. I have enjoyed those scenes in which Timas is the focal character and I have high hopes that the novel will conclude nicely, as right now the characterizations are better than in the previous novels and the pacing is smoother. It'll probably be two months before I sit down and write out all of my thoughts.

Hope these teasers will be enough for those who are curious about these two summer releases!

Trailer for Tobias Buckell's upcoming novel, Sly Mongoose

I saw this on Buckell's site and I couldn't resist posting it here. By the way, Sly Mongoose is one of the books that'll be featured in Sunday's post on my Most Anticipated 2008 Release. So consider this post a sneak peek for that as well!

Best of 2007: A look back at the Best of 2006 Debut Novelists

There were three authors making their fantasy novel debuts in 2006 that I lauded in my Best of 2006 review. I thought before I announce the top three for 2007 that I would take a look back at these three novels (Hal Duncan's Vellum; Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora; and Tobias Buckell's Crystal Rain) and see what each author managed to accomplish this year with their 2007 releases.

Hal Duncan, Vellum.

This book also made my overall Best of 2006 list at #2 due to its rich, multilayered prose. A complex but yet mostly rewarding story of a near-future event in which certain individuals gain the ability to travel here and there through a Multiverse-like setting of 3D time and space called the Vellum. Each is looking for the fabled Book of All Hours, which permits its holder literally to rewrite history by an erasure here, a scribble there. Over the course of the novel, we are introduced to archetypical characters such as Jack, Phreedom, and Seamus, among others. What each means in the end is revealed in Ink.

While I loved Vellum, I was not as enamored with Ink. Although a re-read almost certainly will improve my opinion of the work, when I read it soon after its February release, I couldn't help but feel that Duncan lingered a bit too much on the exploration of the Vellum at the expense of developing the end story and concluding this truly epic battle of Heaven and Hell under other guises. However, the characters continued to develop and ultimately we get to see more of the archetypes behind the seven characters that appear in this duology.

Ranking of 2007 Effort: Second

Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

This was more of a "popcorn" read, in that it is best to be read without trying to think too much about the characterizations or the plot development, since invariably there would be quite a few places for the nitpickers to go to work. It was apparently intended to be a "fun" read and using that as the main criteria for judging it last year, it mostly succeeded, despite a few ragged places around the middle and the choppy ending that perhaps ought to have been revised further to make it flow better. That being said, I enjoyed this novel.

The second novel in The Gentleman Bastards sequence, Red Seas Under Red Skies, I did not enjoy much at all. The "fun" elements were repeated too much for my liking, making for a duller and less enjoyable experience. Add to that the interminable plot to steal from the Sinspire and the ultimate downer of yet another pirate cruise, and I was very underwhelmed by this effort.

Ranking: A very distant third

Tobias Buckell, Crystal Rain

While at first glance this might seem to be the most shallow of the three (due to its relatively slender page count of roughly 350 pages compared to the 500+ page counts for the other two), Buckell displays a nice ability to cut to the chase and to lay out the story and the characters in a quick fashion without skimping overmuch on developing both. This is an adventure/mystery story (the mystery revolving around the lost memory of the main character) and the ending was satisfying. I thought back a year ago that this was a good, solid opener that held promise for future development in succeeding novels.

Well, my expectations were met and even exceeded a little bit when I read Ragamuffin this June. Expanding the story far beyond the planetwide scope of Crystal Rain, introduces a whole new layer of backstory and a host of new and interesting characters. While events here ultimately are tied into the events and characters of the first novel, I felt that Ragamuffin itself is little more than just the first true showing of what seems to be a very promising SF series. Of the three 2006 debuts that had 2007 follow-ups, this was the only one to show improvement over the first.

Ranking: First


And what about the candidates for the 2007 Debut Novels? Here are the names I'm toying with listed below. Keep in mind that I'm going to be thinking of a spec fic debut and not a general one, in case one wants to ask why a certain author made this list despite having three previous award-winning novels:

David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

Jeffrey Overstreet, Auralia's Colors

Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

Best of 2007: The Next Ten

For those who may have wondered why Book X or Y failed to make my Top 12 Countdown list, I decided that I would post a list of ten others that I considered adding (again, there will be a separate list for short story collections and anthologies in the coming days), but ultimately decided not to for various reasons. Hopefully you'll find these works to be worthy of reading and discussion in the near future.


Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, A Companion to Wolves.

While this was one of the few animal companion stories that I have read and enjoyed (the few others that come to mind are too treacly for my tastes), not to mention the authors have constructed a multilayered society fraught with political, social, and sexual tensions, I ultimately decided against having this book appear on the Countdown for a very simple reason: I did not want to have multiple novels by the same author appear on the Countdown. Besides, any of these ten could have made the Countdown if I had chosen the list another time.

Tobias Buckell, Ragamuffin.

While I'll say more about this book and its author in an upcoming post on the three authors who made my 2006 Debut Author list, I can say that I believed that Ragamuffin showed necessary plot and characterization growth from 2006's Crystal Rain. I enjoyed this tale and its broadening of the storyline universe, but I decided to exclude it from the list more because I am expecting even more goodness from Buckell in his upcoming third novel, Sly Mongoose. It's just hard for middle volumes in any genre or storytelling form to win the prize (I think Monette's The Mirador was the only middle volume work I had on the Countdown), but like the others on this list, Buckell's work certainly would have been a worthy candidate for the Countdown.

Hal Duncan, Ink.

I loved his first volume of the Book of All Hours duology, Vellum, when I read it back in July 2006. It was full of interesting archetypes and the 3-D concept of time/place was done quite well. So it was with great anticipation that I preordered Ink, eager for its February release. I read it over a couple of days, but ultimately, it felt a bit "flat" to me, as if a string or two had broken in the performance. While far from a "bad" book, Ink for now (as I suspect a re-read might increase my opinion of it) is just merely a "very good" read, thus dropping it off of my personal Top 12 for 2007.

David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein.

Durham is not a new author; he has published three excellent historical novels (Gabriel's Story; Walk Through Darkness; Pride of Carthage) and in this opener to the Acacia trilogy, he brings a lot of the historical fiction tools to this secondary world setting. We see all sorts of links and chains that bind the Acacian ruling family to sordid things such as slavery and the drug trade, things not often talked about or shown in such books. While the more removed third-person limited style was a bit off-putting for those readers who wanted to immerse themselves in every sweaty, dank moment, I think it was an appropriate voice to capture the "historical" feel that I suspect Durham wanted this volume to have, not to mention that it made it possible for this story to be told in one 576 page volume rather than being sprawled out over multiple volumes. This book was one of the very last ones cut from the list (I originally was contemplating a Top 15) and I dropped it more because I am awaiting to see how the characters develop in the following two volumes. I suspect those volumes will be even more rewarding than this one.

Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss

This was an emotionally draining but powerful story of an aging photographer from the punk scene in the 1970s who has been having some nasty flashbacks from her past. More of a psychological horror novel than anything overtly "speculative" in nature, this was a very well-written and gripping narrative. The only reason it didn't make the Countdown (or even get a full review from me when I read it last month) is that I was left numb at the end - not the dull sensation caused by inferior prose, but rather that it was so overwhelming in places (having worked with and known teens that are going through the same stages that Hand's main character does) that I think it'll take time and a re-read later for me to be able to write a succinct review.

Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

Rothfuss certainly knows how to incorporate elements of oral storytelling forms into his story, as I got this sense on occasion that I was being "told" the story rather than just reading it. Kvothe was an intriguing character and there is much promise for the next two volumes in this trilogy for it to become a classic in the years to come. However, there were some rough patches in the characterization and the narrative flow. Not enough to damper the enjoyment much, but just enough for me to leave it off of the Countdown. Rothfuss, however, does have the potential to write a book that might make a future edition of the Countdown.

Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Well of Ascension

Despite having a tepid, lukewarm reaction to Sanderson's debut novel, Elantris, when I read it in January 2006, I found myself enjoying the first two volumes of the Mistborn trilogy when I read them back this summer. The characters weren't as wooden, the action was better-plotted, and the premise of "What would happen in the world if the Dark Side won?" made for an engaging opening volume. While I enjoyed The Well of Ascension almost as much as I did The Final Empire, it suffered a bit from the usual middle volume problems of lacking a defined and separate introduction and conclusion. For that, it gets an honorable mention but no place on my Best of 2007 Countdown.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin

For those who aren't familiar with Tolkien beyond The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, this expanded narrative (pieced together from various drafts by his son Christopher) of a dark, tragic First Age tale might seem unsettling with its "historical" feel and its rather nasty ending. I enjoyed reading this tale a lot in abbreviated form over the past 20 years and I thought Christopher Tolkien did a nice job in constructing a good narrative from all the bits and pieces his father had written over the years. However, this edition was little more than a compilation of drafts that I had mostly read elsewhere over the years, so it's mainly for this reason that I decided not to include The Children of Húrin in the Best of 2007 Countdown.

Daniel Wallace, Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician

Although I have not read Wallace's other works (Big Fish being the most famous of those, I believe), I will try to correct that in the coming year as this was an excellent sleight-of-hand telling of a backroads circus performer and his tragic life. There are hints that the "negro magician" might actually have made a deal with the Devil for actual magical powers, but in this shifting narrative told by those who knew him best, the truth becomes buried under layers of artifice until a rather surprising history is revealed. I enjoyed this novel quite a bit and had the privilege of hearing Wallace read from it when he was in Nashville on my birthday back in July. It didn't make the Countdown more because it was hard for me to decide between that and a couple of others and ultimately those other tales stayed in my mind just a tiny bit more than this excellent tale did.

Zoran Živković, Steps Through the Mist

Serbian author Zoran Živković has written some delightfully meditative and interconnected stories over the years, in arrangements that he calls "story suites." In this collection, there are five women who have various interactions with a sometimes-metaphorical, sometimes-very real "mist," each of those encounters occurring at a pivotal point in the stories. These were very well-written, but not as moving as his earlier collection, Seven Touches of Music. For that reason, I decided to leave this work off of my Best of 2007 Countdown, although I certainly would recommend it to most people, especially those who are fans of Živković's earlier work.

Tobias Buckell, Ragamuffin

Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell
TOR

Tobias Buckell’s second novel, Ragamuffin, a sequel to his well-received debut, Crystal Rain, follows the same form that Buckell established in his first. The novel comes in at a little over 300 pages in the hardcover form, tiny compared with most of books being published these days. However, the story being told is anything but small. Buckell is just not wasting any words.

Unlike the first novel, where the entire story plays out on a single world, in a struggle between two primarily human forces, Ragamuffin greatly expands the scope of both Buckell’s universe, and the issues being presented by the story. The story begins on a far away world in the universe that Crystal Rain’s world, Nanegeda, has been cut off from for over 300 hundred years. There are a few alien races encountered, though more are dwelling behind the scenes of the novel. The focus of this book is the human plight in this Universe, subject to a race called the Satraps either directly or through the influence of other Satrapy controlled species.

Nashara, the new prime character in this novel, is on the run from Satrapy controlled forces and attempting to find a free human holding in the universe. Nashara was from a planet called Chimson, founded by the same people who founded Nanegeda, and she was originally sent on a mission to try to reconnect with that settlement. Both Chimson and Nanegeda have been removed from the system, so Nashara is trying to improvise… with very mixed results.

John de Brun, Pepper, and Jerome, primary characters from Crystal Rain, also play a prominent role in this novel, roughly 7 years after the events in CR.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel, and found it just as rewarding as the first. Again, I maintain that the book could use another 20 to 30 pages to more fully develop characters, political situations, and even a few of the scenes. While the quick development and pacing of the story does lead to a very vibrant story, a little more here and there could do a great deal of help. Still this is a fun and entertaining read, complete with an interesting created universe, and the development of some interesting political and social dynamics to add depth to the narrative.

My primary complaint about the novel is that I felt the very end of the novel fell more than a little short. The story had a great build to climax, then all of the sudden there are a quick succession of many short little chapters that jump from character to character, situation to situation. It isn’t exactly clear what is being addressed. What exactly is the fallout and development after the climax? What is the relationship between what happened and the the final few scenes? The book just seemed to blow apart a bit in the last 20 pages or so.

Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell is a solid space opera novel, a great sequel to a very strong first novel. Nashara, Pepper, and John de Brun are interesting characters. All in all, I certainly recommend both Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin to any and all readers.

Tobias Buckell, Crystal Rain

Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell

Crystal Rain is the debut novel of Tobias Buckell. The books tells an interesting scifi story, and it does it that all too unusual way... in under 400 pages. All in all, this is a very strong debut and a fun read.

At first, it's difficult to say just where this story might be taking place, or even when. It's a testament to Buckell's skill as a writer that he manages to instantly invoke a sense of place and history. What might have been a nearly contemporary Caribbean setting, turns out to be a far future Caribbean settlement on another world, long cut off from the rest of the universe, and even from any real technology. This sense of place and culture is deepened by Buckell's skilled use of character accent and jargon.

The story follows a few PoVs as they navigate a land that is caught up in a war. There is little excess in the storytelling. The plot moves quickly, and the story builds on itself very efficiently. John deBrun is a fisherman in a small isolated village. When an army of Azteca cross the mountains, his village is subjugated. John himself is being sought out for secrets he supposedly knows, and an Azteca spy is chasing after those secrets. A strange man named Pepper is also looking for John, but his reasons are a whole lot different. War has come. John sets out to save his family, and things very quickly start to happen.

At the heart of the narrative tension is the relative difference between the PoV characters understanding of what is going on. There are traitors. There is deeper history. Not everyone is what they seem to be. The war itself only a small part of a much larger history.

While I feel that the book could have used another 15 or 20 strategically placed pages, room for a bit deeper characterization, or the space for some little further development, I think that Crystal Rain is one of the stronger debut novels that I've read in quite a while. The novel is a quick and satisfying read that I happily recommend to anyone who likes scifi or fantasy.

Tobias Buckell Interview

A few weeks ago, Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist asked me to participate in an interview he was doing with Tobias Buckell, author of Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin. Pat just posted the interview and rather than just copy/pasting the entire thing here, I'll just post a link here. It was really good to read some of Buckell's thoughtful responses to the questions we asked and hopefully there'll be more people who'll be curious enough to go out and buy his books and see for themselves if it's the sort of story they want to read. All I can say is that I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Sly Mongoose!

Review of Tobias Buckell's Ragamuffin

Crystal Rain, Tobias Buckell's first book, was one of my favorite debut novels of 2006. It was a compact (around 350 pages), fast-paced novel set in a far future terraformed world settled by descendants of Caribbean islanders. For hundreds of years, Nanagada had been cut off from the rest of the galaxy (alluded to in cryptic terms through the novel), but was in Crystal Rain the source of a renewed effort of the Azteca (Nahuatl-speaking humans under the influence of "gods" called Teotl) to capture the lands of Nanagada that were on the other side of the aptly-named Wicked High Mountains.

Crystal Rain introduced three important characters: John deBrun, his former comrade-in-arms Pepper, and John's son, Jerome, who symbolized the refugee, those who were cut off from the causes of a conflict but were instead most effected and changed by it. It was these characterizations set in an adventure-based setting that made Crystal Rain such an enjoyable read for me last autumn.

Ragamuffin is not a typical sequel. For starters, the playing field is much larger than a single planet. Things hinted at in Crystal Rain are explored here in much more detail. This is a galaxy-wide story, and the cast of characters by necessity had to be broadened.

In the first part, we are introduced to Nashara, a cloned biomechanical human who has been equipped with technologies that enable her to wreak havoc in the galaxy. Crystal Rain's Human/Teotl/Loa conflict has given way to a world in which a single species, the Benevolent Satrapy, has come to dominate the entire galaxy. Humans had managed to win a semblance of freedom only by fleeing to the corners or by forcing the Satrapy to shut down the wormhole system that connected to human-dominated planets such as Earth and New Anegada. But many humans had chosen to become little more than chattel on worlds controlled by races more amenable to the Satrapy, such as the Gahe, while others had been co-opted and had become the human arm of the Satrapy.

Nashara had been hired by the outlawed League of Human Affairs to assassinate a high-ranking Gahe breeder, as the League continues its low-intensity war against the Satrapy. As she carries this out, events start to emerge that link her, the quasi-piratical Ragamuffins, and Crystal Rain's trio into a cross-galactic adventure that is in turns fast-paced and quick-penetrating in its presentation of certain topics very relevant to our world today.

Ragamuffin has more of the trappings of a space opera than does Crystal Rain, in that most of the action for the first half of the novel takes place outside of Nanagada between some of the 48 worlds connected by wormholes. There are space battles, more technological razzle-dazzle (the lamina is a particularly intriguing one), and other elements that one would associate with such a sub-genre. But Ragamuffin is much more than that. It is, in many key ways, as much of a spiritual sequel to Crystal Rain as a chronological one.

War is nasty stuff. People suffer, die, and often live in almost-perpetual fear when under such traumatic conditions. What does this do to the mentalities of people? Can they trust others that are not akin to them in appearance or speech? Can they separate acts of necessity from acts of desire? Is betrayal something of the heart or of the mind (as I'm thinking of one particular episode in Ragamuffin)? And what happens when someone who has been traumatized over the years is forced into a corner and comes to think of a friend as being the worst sort of betrayer?

Buckell presents all of the above in only 316 pages. He does not dwell on these matters (even if many readers might find themselves wishing that he would), but instead drops it like a rock into the pond and lets us ride the ripples. I found myself going from being frustrated about this narrative technique to becoming more aware of possible subtextual interpretations, as I would find myself thinking pages later, "Wait a minute..." as prior events connected into the larger narrative of Ragamuffin. Some might find this apparent lack of explication to be a negative; I found it to be grounds for fertile speculation and consideration of possible future implications. It is nice, sometimes, when an author does not beat the reader over the head with the overarching plotline, leaving she or he to instead read on as he or she might desire, stopping to consider as all the events come crashing together in the mind.

That being said, there are some weaknesses, of course. With such a fast pace (over 70 chapters in these 316 pages), many readers are going to feel as though the action is little more than an outline of what could have been a 600-700 page novel. While I disagree with that notion, it is something that has to be considered when deciding if this is a book worth reading. The characterizations develop swiftly, perhaps too swiftly in places (the apparent mutual admiration/budding courtship between two characters comes to mind in just how rapidly it came together). And for some, Ragamuffin is going to leave them wondering just where the real story is heading.

These are valid concerns that I expect some readers to have. While I personally had little problem (after I adapted, as I mentioned above, to the narrative style) with the pacing or with the writing, I did find the characterizations could have been even better if Buckell had devoted just a teeny-tiny more time to exploring the characters' thoughts. But this is more of a nitpicky thing than of any serious flaw in what I consider to be an improvement over the already very good-to-excellent Crystal Rain.

Summary: Ragamuffin is the second book set in the same universe as Crystal Rain, but with a much larger scope and cast of characters. Fast-paced, this story is broken into three parts, with only the third to unite the plotlines of the previous two. Told in third-person PoV, there is a lot of action mixed in with introspective moments that are the consequences of said action. It is a strong sequel that takes the adventure style of its predecessor and builds upon it. Highly recommended for those who enjoy well-written stories that combine a fast pace with touching moments.

Release Date: June 12 (US), with Amazon UK carrying the American edition (no known UK edition)

Interview with Tobias S. Buckell

Did you always want to be a writer, or did you experiment with other jobs?

I've always wanted to be a writer, but it's not automatic that you can make a living doing something like that. Until recently I did tech support to pay the bills. Now I'm a freelance writer and blogger as well as author.

Aside from writing, what occupies your time?

As I mentioned above, I've gotten into blogging and freelancing. Writing about random interesting subjects is a lot of fun. I still read a great deal, and with the recent purchase of an Xbox 360, I've been spending some time playing video games if I can find the spare time. I really enjoy the Call of Duty series.

Why should we read fiction? Why is literature important?

Fiction does a lot of things. I really enjoy fiction, particularly genre fiction, because I find fiction to be somewhat subversive if done right. In the guise of 'just telling a tale' writers are given a longer lead to explore humanity before people's preconceptions and existing psychological baggage halts the process. Fiction allows us to live another persons life. Walking in someone else's shoes is the best way to learn about the world, grow our empathy, and become better people.

That said, I don't we SHOULD read fiction as a forceful declarative statement. I don't like the hint of 'good for you' type insistence when some people say things like that. You SHOULD take cod liver oil as well, but that doesn't mean its fun. A lot of literature can be fun, and forgetting that might happen if people think we should be reading fiction for x and y reason. I fundamentally think reading literature is fun, and that's why people might opt to do it. Education, empathy, insight, personal growth, all those are just bonuses!

Do you know what you are going to write ahead of time?

I usually plan ahead, enough so that I don't hit any roadblocks and have some outline set up for myself to follow. But I also leave myself enough room in the outline to play around as I see fit, and I also give myself permission to change big enough elements if a cool enough idea comes along.

How do you get your ideas?

Research. It sounds so dull, but it's not research like high school or college where you sit and read boring texts. Research is flipping through books about stuff you're psyched about, then finding something further you need information about, and then getting so obsessed about finding that little fact, you happily flip through the dry and dusty texts to snag that info, and feel completely fired up when you get that fact. Once I get enough cool ideas and things I feel I can't not use, I begin assembling them and wondering if they might all fit together.

Which of your characters is the most like you and why?

Now there's an interesting question I don't think I've been asked. My characters have adventures the likes of which I don't think I've ever really seen. I think Jerome, though, the young kid in Crystal Rain who's life gets swept away by the invasion that comes through his town is the closest. He isn't a great hero, or adventurer, just someone whose life is getting turned upside down by external events and trying to keep his head down.

Which is the most different and why?

I think Pepper is the most different character. He's a bit of a psychopath in the name of what he thinks is good. That's what makes him my favorite to write and play around with.

Have you had any significant disappointments?

My writing career so far has just been a journey of awesome things, and everything keeps happening faster than I expected. I sold my first short story to an SF magazine when I was 19, and I won a quarter of the Writers of the Future contest, which I'd wanted to do since I was 15. I keep expecting something horrible to happen any second.

Would you ever consider getting involved in the movie business?

If LA came knocking I wouldn't turn anything down!

What advice do you have for other writers?

The biggest part of the word writer is the word write. Writers must write and write often. Like a musician practicing scales, or a painter learning how to mix colors, we have to practice our craft over and over again.

And the last question in this interview is the traditional question of the OF:
If you were to own several monkeys and/or midgets, how many would you own, and what would you name them?

Well, if I could have an infinite number of monkeys working on typewriters in my basement, theoretically as well as producing Shakespeare, they'd also write my next novel for me, and I could beat my deadline and turn the next novel in early.

That would be nice, but I don't think I'd be able to name them all. I'd have to call them Monkey #1, #2, #3 and so on...

Thank you for your time and patience, Mr. Buckell. We wish you the best of luck with your work.