When a private envoy of the queen and member of Lord Carmichael's discreet service goes missing, Balfour and Meriwether are asked to look into the affair. They will find a labyrinth of dreams, horrors risen from hell, prophecy, sexual perversion, and an abandoned farmhouse on the moors outside Harrowmoor Sanitarium. The earth itself will bare its secrets and the Empire itself will tremble in the face of the hidden dangers they discover, but the greatest peril is the one they have brought with them...
***
In recent years, the adventures of Balfour and Meriwether have been a rare yet redolent pleasure. Daniel Abraham's dashing duo have appeared in only two tales to date — 'The Emperor's Vengeance' and 'The Vampire of Kabul' — both of which I reread this week, the better to be ready to review what is certainly their best and most complex quest yet.
I really needn't have — happily, no prior knowledge is required by The Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs — though it was a pleasure to immerse myself again in said secret histories, and this novella's revelatory resolution did prove particularly potent on the back of those stories.
Again per the precedent set by its predecessors, there is the sense that The Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs is but an episode in the larger canon of Balfour and Meriwether's collaborative careers as agents of Queen and country. Here, however, the episode is essentially supersized; to wit, Abraham is able to expand his narrative and develop his characters in a fairly fascinating fashion.
Spotted yesterday on danielabraham.com, the revised cover art for the Star Wars novel he and Ty Franck are currently collaborating on:
Though the Expanse novels have come to be an annual tentpole treat for me, I'm not sure how I feel about James S. A. Corey working on a Star Wars novel. It's not a franchise I'm particularly interested in... though I confess I'm tempted to make an exception for Honor Among Thieves, which is due out surprisingly soon — in March from LucasBooks.
On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a high-level politician struggles to prevent interplanetary war from reigniting. And on Venus, an alien protomolecule has overrun the planet, wreaking massive, mysterious changes and threatening to spread out into the solar system.
In the vast wilderness of space, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have been keeping the peace for the Outer Planets Alliance. When they agree to help a scientist search war-torn Ganymede for a missing child, the future of humanity rests on whether a single ship can prevent an alien invasion that may have already begun...
***
In Caliban's War, the planet Ganymede is frequently referred to as the "breadbasket" of the galaxy. For generations, it has provided a crucial foothold for humanity's expansion into the stars. It's like an oasis in the desert: no-one owns it exactly, but everybody needs it equally. Its practical value, then, is unparalleled, and its political capital is accordingly incalculable, so when things on Ganymede go suddenly sideways because of a firefight between opposing forces and a single apparently alien interloper, all of the major powers from across the vastness of The Expanse take a stance.
Some see a grave threat. Others, an opportunity for untold profit. However, with all-out hostilities in the offing, one potty-mouthed politician finds herself fighting for peace. "Caught up in this smaller, human struggle of war and influence and the tribal division between Earth and Mars," (p.383) not to mention the noncommittal Alliance of Outer Planets, Chrisjen Avasarala - assistant to the UN's undersecretary of executive administration - is one of three new narrators introduced in Caliban's War, and she will have a pivotal part to play in the coming months.
In the interim, brilliantly, she's going to swear like a sailor.
Meanwhile, on Ganymede itself, we meet a disparate pair of POV characters. Gunnery Sergeant Roberta Draper - Bobbie to her friends and fellow Martian Marines - is the sole survivor of the gruesome ground war that sparked the space battles which rage in the fire-speckled skies. Haunted by the things she saw, she's shipped off to Earth to tell her incredible tale, where she finds an unlikely ally in Avasarala.
And then there's Prax, an unassuming scientist whose immunocompromised daughter is kidnapped during the planet-wide panic that follows the first shots. Our estranged single father is heartbroken, but pragmatic: Prax understands that "he and Mei were a pebble in space. They didn't signify." (p.108)
To one man, though, they matter — perhaps more than anything else. That would be the captain of the Rocinante, James Holden, and for spoileriffic reasons I'd really rather not get into, his is the only returning perspective from the inaugural act of The Expanse. The other half of that equation, Detective Miller, is much missed over the course of Caliban's War, and though his presence is certainly felt, his actual, factual absence from the narrative gives this second salvo a fairly different flavour from the first.
Caliban's War picks up roughly a year after the shocking climax of Leviathan Wakes, with humanity reeling from the revelation that we are not, after all, alone. Somewhere out there an alien intelligence exists, and our species’ situation has slipped from bad to worse, because it doesn’t mean to make nice with its new neighbours.
Ever since the events on Venus, Holden and his crew - namely Naomi, Alex and Amos - have been running odd jobs for the OPA, and the dirty work they've been doing has taken a toll on all involved, though the captain most notably. "He'd turned into the man [Naomi] feared he was becoming. Just another Detective Miller, dispensing frontier justice from the barrel of his gun." (p.352)
Inasmuch as this frequent fear cheapens the legacy of a fantastic character, it also serves to add a compelling dimension to Holden's formerly one-note nature, and the other crew members of the Rocinante are decently developed as well. The child abuse involved in Prax's narrative strikes a surprising chord with Amos; Alex kinda falls for Bobbie; and Naomi is no longer so sure about her feelings for Holden.
The real meat of this superb sequel lies elsewhere, however. With Avasarala - who shines an unflattering light on the politics of tomorrow - and Prax in particular, who offers insight into the family of the future and a layman's slant on the sprawling galaxy of The Expanse. I'm afraid that Bobbie, beyond her involvement in the battle which kicks off Caliban's War, seems something of a spare part, but Prax and Avasarala give this sf series a new lease on life, demonstrating the setting’s inestimable potential at the same time as realising a few of its most fascinating aspects.
Caliban's War can also lay claim to a powerful sense of momentum thanks to its co-authors' impressive storytelling diversity. When the book's four perspectives resolve into two greater tales, and then these two become one, the impulse to pump your fists in pleasure is almost irresistible. The pace is breakneck from the start, and though Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck run into a touch of trouble trying to sustain said for all 600 pages of this unstoppable object, by and large it gets exponentially faster. Markedly harder. I’d go so far as to say better — and Caliban's War is pretty brilliant to begin with.
Which is not to say our allied authors don't miss the mark occasionally. There's Bobbie, obviously. But you should also be aware that there's some rather tiresome dialogue in the cards, as well as an overabundance of laughably transparent politics, and a couple of at best cartoonishly characterised bad guys. Last but not least, Caliban's War attempts to reproduce one of the most memorable moments of Leviathan Wakes, but the hellish descent our refreshed cast of characters must make is substantially less impactful that it once was.
In a sense, then, Caliban's War is more of the same, but the same good thing, it bears saying. And thanks in no small part to the perspectives of Prax and Avasarala, and the new angles on this universe they offer, it's different enough from its predecessor to stand apart, if not alone — some knowledge of book one is practically a prerequisite. That said, last year's Leviathan Wakes got this action-packed series off to a stellar start, so if you haven't read it already... well.
Profoundly affecting and intellectually stimulating space opera The Expanse is not, but space rock, as exemplified by Caliban's War, is at least as awesome. Bring on the encore performance!
Jayné Heller thinks of herself as a realist, until she discovers reality isn't quite what she thought it was. When her uncle Eric is murdered, Jayné travels to Denver to settle his estate, only to learn that it's all hers -- and vaster than she ever imagined. And along with properties across the world and an inexhaustible fortune, Eric left her a legacy of a different kind: his unfinished business with a cabal of wizards known as the Invisible College.
Led by the ruthless Randolph Coin, the Invisible College harnesses demon spirits for their own ends of power and domination. Jayné finds it difficult to believe magic and demons can even exist, let alone be responsible for the death of her uncle. But Coin sees Eric's heir as a threat to be eliminated by any means -- magical or mundane -- so Jayné had better start believing in something to save her own life.
Aided in her mission by a group of unlikely companions -- Aubrey, Eric's devastatingly attractive assistant; Ex, a former Jesuit with a lethal agenda; Midian, a two-hundred-year-old man who claims to be under a curse from Randolph Coin himself; and Chogyi Jake, a self-styled Buddhist with mystical abilities -- Jayné finds that her new reality is not only unexpected, but often unexplainable. And if she hopes to survive, she'll have to learn the new rules fast -- or break them completely....
***
If I had it in my power to mercy kill a single genre of fiction, I wouldn't hesitate. I'd put a bullet in paranormal romance, and dispose of its remains as rudely as possible.
Apropos of which: urban fantasy. Urban fantasy and paranormal romance are typically tarred with the same broad brush, not least by me... but slowly, but surely, I'm coming around. It helps not one whit that urban fantasies often feature, in a prominent role, some strain of the paranormal romance, meanwhile paranormal romances, for their pointed part, tend to take place in contemporary urban environments with a fantastical twist.
Confusing the two is an easy mistake to make; a lazy one, I dare say. They attract at least a superficially similar readership. Yet in the current climate, with these specific sub-genres on the ascent - arguably at the exponential expense of all others in speculative fiction - clarity is king, and an understanding of what sets the aforementioned pair apart is more vital now than it's ever been.
Let me begin this review in earnest, then, with an assurance: that Unclean Spirits by M. L. N. Hanover is not - I repeat not - a paranormal romance novel, and people like me, who would sooner suffer through water torture than read such a thing, need not fear.
That said, there's a love triangle. But, crucially I think, the love triangle isn't the point, the whole point, and nothing but the point, so help me God. Hanover handles this tryst - between our heroine Jayné Heller, Aubrey, the magical parasitologist she falls for, and Kim, Aubrey's not-quite-ex-wife - with almost none of the angst and melodrama that commonly characterise such situations in paranormal romance novels, and indeed, it isn't even remotely near the core of the story, neither narratively nor emotionally.
Unclean Spirits is about a disillusioned college dropout whose oddball uncle leaves her the keys to the proverbial kingdom upon his untimely passing. Admittedly, his (and now hers) is a kingdom scourged by Riders, loupine, and vârkolak -- which is to say demons, werewolves and vampires, but "don't let it bug you. Taxonomy's always a bitch," (p.152) isn't it?
In any event, Jayné inherits more than the discomfiting knowledge that these monsters are among us. She also comes into a substantial sum of money; an impressive property portfolio, with outposts around the world; a small team of specialists in all things otherworldly, including Aubrey, Midian, Chogyi Jake and Ex; oh, and the very vendetta that killed her uncle Eric. Jayné doesn't have time to take any of this in, alas, because evidently there's a high price on her head, and in short order she resolves to take the fight to her opponent's door.
"I looked at the window, and the darkness had made a mirror. Here was a woman on the trailing edge of twenty-two with no friends left. No family left. A shitload of money from nowhere, and the man who'd given it to her [...] had been murdered.
"I looked the same. Same dark eyes,. Same black hair. Same mole I'd always told myself I'd have taken off as soon as I had the tattoo removal done. But I wasn't the same. [...] Uncle Eric was dead. Someone had killed him. And I was going to find out who. Randolph Coin was the best lead I had. So that was the lead I'd follow." (p.50)
As evidenced above, there is a refreshing directness to Unclean Spirits, and a sense of inevitable momentum that rarely lets up. Hanover is a no nonsense author who doesn't pull his punches, condescend to his readers - whatever age or gender they may be - or overly romanticise his characters. Take Jayné: "My first kiss had been at the state qualifiers my sophomore year with a guy I'd met that night and never saw again. The next year, I'd arranged a plan with three of my friends that let me slip out to a movie with a guy from French class." (p.124)
Despite the title, then, this is not a book about purity, and to Hanover's great credit his almost disarming attitude holds true over the course of Unclean Spirits. Many moments come and go during which a less resolute author would have given in to temptation, the better to extract and exploit all the possible angst from any given encounter, but wisely, Hanover resists this impulse, so prevalent in the species of fiction we are currently considering.
No one sequence better exemplifies this restraint that the face-off between Jayné and Kim over Aubrey (see p.281), who hardly figures in to the bigger picture anyway. I'm sure you can imagine how indulgently a poor man's paranormal romance might render such a scenario, but in this smart urban fantasy it's no big thing. Jayné and Kim are just people being people, and there are other actual characters - actual characters as opposed to single-sided ciphers, you understand - amongst the cast of Unclean Spirits. Midian in particular is brilliant. He and his cohorts have real relationships rather than melodramatic arcs.
There is wit in this book. There is humour, and intelligence, and honesty, of all things. Truth be told I would expect no less from a pseudonym of Daniel Abraham, but I'm still somewhat surprised to find myself with so many nice things to say about this, the first novel in a series of four, as it stands. If there's a more versatile author than Daniel Abraham out there, excepting China Mieville, then I do not know his - or her - name.
So please: don't be put off by the bland cover art, or the uninspiring synopsis, and don't let the associations get to you. When approaching Unclean Spirits, think Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead of Twilight. And there are few higher recommendations in my book than that.
Humanity has colonized the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach.
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship,The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for - and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.
Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him toThe Scopuliand rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.
Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations - and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.
***
You know what the first thing I wanted to do was, when I finished reading book one of The Expanse? Read book two of The Expanse. And mayhap the third after that. You set 'em up, Orbit, and I'll knock 'em down!
Truly, I could not get enough of Leviathan Wakes. To be perfectly frank, I'm not the biggest SF fan - though equally I suppose I am far from the smallest - yet this masterful collaboration checked off every one of my marks, before proceeding to tear right through the census. Were it not for Embassytown, and the months of new genre releases still stretched out before me, I'd declare it the best science fiction novel of 2011 right now and call it a day. Furthermore, much as I love my Mieville - and I love my Mieville - in terms of pure, unadulterated fun, Leviathan Wakes would handily take the cake come that particular cage match.
But apples and oranges: after all, Leviathan Wakes is sprung from a very different oeuvre of SF than Embassytown, with its towering intelligence and its inextricably literary smarts, might be said to signify. It is, as per George R. R. Martin's bang-on three word blurb, "Kickass space opera." Well, quite. Consider my ass kicked black and blue.
The first thing you need to know about Leviathan Wakes - that is to say the first thing after it's awesome - is that it is very much a book of twos. That it comes from the pseudonymous pen of two distinct writers - namely Daniel Abraham, author of The Long Price quartet and of late The Dragon's Path, and Ty Franck, assistant to the man and the mind behind A Song of Ice and Fire - two distinct writers working together for the first time, no less, is only the beginning of its duality. Yet it factors.
Rather more notable, and I would assert not unrelated to that precursory split, is the twofold division in its narration, for through its slightly bloated course Leviathan Wakes alternates between chapters told from the perspective of two men, worlds apart in space and purpose. For years, XO Jim Holden has been doing laps around the solar system, which humanity has long since colonised as of the start of The Expanse. But his half-cocked career hauling glaciers from asteroid to planet and back comes to a shocking conclusion when his ship, the Canterbury, is killed. Whether Holden and his close-knit skeleton crew survived the devastation by accident or design remains to be seen, but determined to do The Right Thing, he broadcasts evidence of the unprovoked attack on the hauler far and wide.
So begins the First Solar War.
In fairness to Holden, the self-righteous so-and-so, it's been a long time coming. Practically since mankind took to the stars, there has been a certain tension between those folks who call Earth and its immediate surroundings home, and the Belters, who hail from the Outer Planets, where life is nasty, brutish and short. On Ceres Station, through which flows "a river of wealth and power unrivalled in human history," doggone Detective Joe Miller provides a perspective in ideological opposition to Holden's; he's a glass half empty sort of guy, while the XO's cup is always full. Miller is too well placed to see the effects of Holden's unwitting declaration of war, because from the moment of his address, tensions between the Earthers and Belters on Ceres - already near boiling point - suddenly erupt.
It's all Miller can do to keep the fragile peace as "the great, implacable clockwork of war ticked one step closer to open fighting," so when his chief dumps a kidnap job on the bitter old detective, he thinks little of it. Yet through it all, it is the disappearance of Julie Mao - the rebellious daughter of one of Ceres Station's security force's biggest financial backers - that plays uppermost on Miller's mind. Then, when open conflict ultimately comes, and the detective is promptly divested of his position, it is her trail he follows... and it leads him all the way to Holden, and his merry band of intergalactic idealists.
So it is that two become one, and Leviathan Wakes at last takes to the stars. I'll admit I had my reservations about this collaboration beforehand - the self-same trepidatiousness with which I approach all such works - and though a truly gripping pre-credits tease did a great deal to dissuade them, as the first book of The Expanse wore on, the narrative's stark duality began to jar. Clearly one perspective was written by one author, my head said, and the other by another; as fine a way as any to divide collaborations, so far as it goes, but initially it felt as if I were reading a pair of discrete tales spliced into one peculiar-looking entity.
That's as may be, but rest assured: when Leviathan Wakes finally comes together, by the dead does it come together. In fact I dare say it's a moment made all the more powerful because of the time it takes for Franck and Abraham to enmesh as authors.
When the season to celebrate the year's most singular literary feats arrives, I very much doubt Leviathan Wakes will be deemed a contender. More's the pity, for short a slight sag in the middle and the air of disparity inherent in most collaborative works, it makes for terrific science fiction. That is to say terrific "working man's science fiction," as Corey notes in the incisive interview supplementing the value-packed e-book edition - and snobbery is as snobbery does, so do not expect the Nebulas to take note.
Doesn't mean you and I shouldn't sit up straight in our chairs and devote our collective attention, because the first book of The Expanse boasts some of the most thrilling action in recent memory, and a world - nay, a universe! - brilliantly built yet not overdesigned, courtesy a minimalist aesthetic which rings all too true. It features a cast of characters which, however archetypal, make for fine, fun company; a pace that rarely flags; and moments of excruciating tension, and skin-crawling horror to boot.
If Leviathan Wakes is not particularly thoughtful SF, then it is the perfect reminder that sometimes... sometimes it's nice to turn down the power, and let someone else do the heavy lifting for you. In that regard, I put to you that the entity James S. A. Corey could hold the very universe on its shoulders.
I wonder... how many times have I read the "best fantasy debut of 2011" already?
Songs of the Earth: there's one. Count Prince of Thorns: and another. And The Unremembered... oh, The Unremembered.
So three. Three, and it's only May - though of those three, I fear I could only stand to read the first two in full. I dare say if I'd completed it, The Unremembered would have been this year's The Left Hand of God, and Peter seems such a genuine fellow; I opted to spare him that, and you.
But I'm getting off topic.
What I mean to say is this: the term, the descriptor aforementioned, "the best fantasy debut" of this year or that, seems to be treated so lightly these days... so lightly that whatsoever meaning it might have had to me, it's long since lost. I won't be seen to espouse such an approach here on The Speculative Scotsman. But of all those new genre novelists I've read since beginning the blog, among the most impressive - near-as-dammit at the fore of a field of sterling contenders - we have Daniel Abraham, may he live long, and prosper.
You've yet to see my reviews of The Long Price quartet; some day soon I expect you will. Nor have I offered opinions on either of Abraham's newer novels as yet, and there's been something of an influx of those, with the recent release of both The Dragon's Path, which is to say the first book of The Dragon and The Coin,and Leviathan Wakes - an SF collaboration with the author Ty Franks. I'll get back to you with the word on each in due course, but I expect that yes, they'll be awesome, each it their own way. Because the man's a bloody marvel. Seems like everything he touches turns to treasure.
Still, you can colour me surprised he's managed to make of his pseudonymous sideline in urban fantasy - that most despised genre of all - something even passing presentable, far less the excellent, edgy entertainment "Hurt Me" represents.
"Hurt Me" was my first taste of MLN Hanover, and though it goes against practically everything I hold dear - God forbid I get caught reading paranormal romance, right? - I think I'll be going back for a second helping... and a third... and so on and so forth till I'm stuffed quite to the gunnels.
"Hurt Me" begins with a house. A decrepit old house, fallen into disrepair, and haunted, so the story goes, by a vengeful spirit: facts or fictions, perhaps, which our first narrator - a nervous Realtor - does his level best to gloss over when showing the property. But Connie Morales sees through his showmanship, his sleight-of-hand and eye. She seems well aware of all the problems associated with 1532 Lachmont Drive, all the things the Realtor hopes to hide from her... yet she signs on the dotted line anyway.
Deal done, Connie moves in, and from here on out the narration of "Hurt Me" alternates between passages told from her counter-intuitively calm and collected perspective and more animated sequences in the company of Connie's new next-door neighbours, who gossip and taunt and warn - as all good neighbours should.
I tend to think these latter scenes exist largely to make "Hurt Me" a livelier and more immediately accessible tale, for Connie can be an unsettling protagonist at the best of times. Formerly a victim of domestic abuse, she obviously knows substantially more about what's going on here than we, yet her behaviour rebuffs explanation at every turn but for the very last. One wonders if she's not some sort of ghost hunter, because clearly she's aware a spirit which means her harm shares 1532 Lachmont Drive with her, yet the closest Connie comes to bona fide fear is when she spills her glass of wine. And even that seems part of the plan...
It all comes clear in the end, of course, and I won't be spoiling that for you here. Suffice it for me to say that if the explanation isn't quite fit to floor those readers who enter every story expecting the unexpected - guilty as charged - then certainly the particulars of the perverserelationship between the haunted and the haunting are apt to catch one off-guard.
And in a good way, needless to say.
I don't usually read the likes of "Hurt Me," but paging through my copy of Songs of Love and Death on the lookout for the new Neil Gaiman I'd heard so very little about, I came across Hanover's name and the penny promptly dropped. I'm such a fan of Daniel Abraham's other work, I simply had to know. Call it morbid curiosity if you like, but I'll tell you this: curiosity did not kill this cat.
"Hurt Me" is a smart and knowing story, taut with tension and as riddled with mystery as a rotten body is bacteria, written by an author who seems in complete control of language and character and narrative - that holy trinity of tale-telling in any and every genre. More fool me, really, for thinking that remarkable talent wouldn't translate across the thin blue line that holds high fantasy apart from paranormal romance, simply because I'm so often disdainful of that latter.
Well... consider my presumptions thus scuttled, going forward.
***
You can find "Hurt Me" in the pages of Songs of Love and Death, an anthology of original short fiction edited by the gruesome twosome of George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, and published late last year by Gallery Press in the United States.
I'm late, wouldn't you know. Don't look so surprised! Why, it's the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and it begins... two days ago.
Damn it.
Well, Saturday I was busy taking over the world. Seriously: I've never been better at Risk than I was on that fine day. But alas, the time for global dominion is over. Today, it's all about Edinburgh.
There aren't many perks to living in Scotland. There are some incredible vistas to be seen around the Highlands and Islands; Irn Bru is everywhere; and there's the annual Fringe Festival, "the world's largest arts festival." Edinburgh, during the four weeks of the festival each year, undergoes a radical transformation - like Bumblebee or Anakin Skywalker - wherein each of the hundreds of venues is given a liberal sprinkling of plastic chairs and ordered, under pain of men in gravity-defying hats what look like distressed cats, to host a variety of performances. There's art, dance and exhibition. Enough nonsense to make you wish you'd never been born.
Gratefully, the Fringe also means a bunch of theatre and comedy, the likes of which Scotland won't see again till the festival returns next year. That's why the other half and I are off through to Edinburgh, is just a few short minutes. If all goes to plan, we'll see the Chinese State Circus do Mulan, some puppets doing some puppety things, and perhaps a man will be funny - one can only hope. All this... and ale. Oh yes: ale.
Enough ale for everyone, but alas, ale doesn't tend to post very well. In the interim, courtesy of Westeros - I really should sign up, shouldn't I? - Aidan just broke a bit of news about The Long Price Quartet author Daniel Abraham's next novel over on A Dribble of Ink, and given how excited the lovely Aidan (a man of wealth and taste) is about all this, The Dragon's Path has just jumped to near-enough the top of my Most Anticipated Novels of Next Year list.
I actually have that list.
Also, Tales of the Ketty Jay teller Chris Wooding has blogged about The Iron Jackal, book three of that space-trucker lark. Specifically, he's blogged about how The Iron Jackal will no longer be called The Iron Jackal, because... there's no Iron Jackal in it.
That should tide you over.
Never fear: we'll be getting back to all things fantasy and sci-fi tomorrow - one thing in particular, admittedly - but today... today, I'm all about the arts.
In case all the tweeting and yesterday's post hasn't given the game away, my holidays are, much to my dismay, well and truly over.
I had just the loveliest time.
No surprises there, I suppose. The company was all I could hope for. The cottage was just lovely; warm, spacious, stocked and perfectly placed. As for Skye itself, well, suffice it to say last week wasn't my first time in the Western Isles - nor my tenth, come to that - but the weather was with us, and there were, as per usual, some incredible sights to be seen.
Yes, I took that. Didn't I go up high! :)
We took in the Faerie Glen, the Old Man of Storr and the Quirang; there was no shortage of fun to be had in the ruins that dot the island; and in Portree - the only place populated enough that you might call it a town - we idled a beautiful day away by the pier and in a great veggie-friendly restaurant that I'd urge everyone who goes to Skye eats in at least once. Cafe Arriba might have cooked up the only cheese and leek fritters I've ever had, but I don't doubt that they were the very best. Dee-licious!
But the Speculative Scotsman is no place to be burbling on about food and local landmarks - however good the food and however historic the landmarks. First and foremost, this is a blog about books! And wouldn't you know it, somehow, in between all the gallivanting around, I found the time to get some serious reading in too.
As detailed in The Curious Case, I took eight books on holiday with me. Actually, that's a bit of a fib. You see, I managed to catch the Amazon man before I left, and - I've no idea how - a ninth novel snuck into my suitcase: Shadow and Betrayal, an omnibus of the first two volumes of Daniel Abraham's sprawling quartet, The Long Price. The first half of which I read, and loved. I'll hold off on saying any more till I've finished the second part.
Of the remaining eight books, I read three, and started two others. Not half bad considering the sun was blazing down every day but for one (my birthday) when I'd fully expected it to be a spiteful no-show so early in the year.
For no particular reason, the first novel that I read from the little library I took on holiday with me was A Dark Matter by Peter Straub. Short of a review and an interview on The Book Smugglers, I really haven't seen much coverage of this one, which is a shame. It's not a perfect piece of speculative fiction - scattershot in places and a little too metaphysical for my tastes, to be honest - but nonetheless, it's an accomplished story by turns creepy and baffling that kept me turning pages well into the wee hours of an evening.
Stay tuned for more on A Dark Matter within the next few weeks. In fact, you can expect a review of that - not to be a tease, but it's already in the can, waiting for the right moment to make a break for it - as well as my takes on the other two books I read from cover to cover within the next few weeks. Which is to say, Alexey Pehov's apparent Night Watch-killer Shadow Prowler and Kat Falls' fabulously inventive all-ages underwater thriller, Dark Life - both of which I enjoyed, although to varying extents. You'll have to wait and see which book's first third nearly had me at my wit's end...
Of course, I had both the winner and the runner-up of February's holiday reading poll in with my luggage, too, and though I'm afraid to say I didn't manage to give the latter - Scar Night by Alan Campbell - another go, as I'd planned to, I did manage to read roughly 400 pages of Gardens of the Moon, the first volume of The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I have the 10th anniversary edition of Steven Erikson's fantasy debut, and the author's down-to-earth introduction had me worried that I might be among those readers who "bail on the series in the first third".
I did not. I suppose there's time yet - but I sincerely doubt that I'll turn my back on the series given how much I've enjoyed what little I've read of it. It was hard going to start with, I'll grant, dense and intimidating at every turn, but soon enough I'd fallen in with the rhythm and flow of Erikson's prose, and from there on out I really began to get into Gardens of the Moon.
So much so, in fact, that in a few weeks you'll be seeing the first in what I hope will be a regular feature series here on The Speculative Scotsman. For the moment, I'm calling it The Malazan Diaries, and whatever particular shape or form it might take, it's going to be a chronicle of my experiences with The Malazan Book of the Fallen from the very first page of the first book in the sequence to the last page of The Crippled God, which still doesn't have a release date yet, though given Erikson's track record should be along sometime in 2011. If I've time enough, I may even take in the novella-length side-stories, not to mention co-creator Ian Cameron Esslemont's novels of The Malazan Empire.
It's going to be quite the trip, and God knows, it could take years for me to make, but I mean to be good and ready for the last novel in The Malazan Book of the Fallen when it arrives. For now, I'll say no more - only advise that you keep your browsers and RSS readers tuned to The Speculative Scotsman for more details on The Malazan Diaries shortly. And if you're feeling particularly kind, you can even help spread the word. This promises to be a long and involved discussion of one of the great fantasy sagas of all time, and if you know a Malazan fan, please do point him or her on over here; I'd love to have everyone with even a passing interest on the series along for the ride, and the participation of an experienced Erikson reader could make for a perfect counterweight to what I'm sure will be a wealth of uninformed observations and assumptions.
So there we have it. My holiday reading. I'm sad, of course, that my break is over, but it was a lovely time, and I'm grateful for that.
But let's be honest: the reading certainly won't stop just because my holiday has!
That's it for today. Expect the usual assortment of news, reviews and interviews to return with a vengeance as of tomorrow. For one thing, it's finally come time to share my interview with Sam Sykes with you all, not to mention my thoughts on Tome of the Undergates, an exciting giveaway... and much, much more.
