Glory Days

There’s a scene in Bull Durham where Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) asks Millie (Jenny Robertson) how “Nuke” Laloosh (Tim Robbins) was in bed.  Millie says “Well, he f**ks like he pitches….sorta all over the place”.  That’s kind of where I am with my reading right now. I’ve finished one book and I’m being pulled in way too many directions as I’m trying to decide what to read next.

I did finish “Ancillary Sword” and enjoyed it – not nearly as much as “Ancillary Justice” but it was a good enough sequel.  In this second book, Ann went from a very big stage and a very big story to a very small one.  The less militaristic aspect of Anaander Mianaai has adopted Breq into her house, promoted her to Fleet Captain and put her in command of the ship Mercy Of Kalys.  She sends Breq, Seivarden and Kalys off to Athoek with orders to secure the system and align it to her objectives.  In fact, Athoek was a predetermined destination in Breq’s mind due to the presence of Lieutenant Awn’s sister – Basnaaid – and Breq’s need to make amends for her killing of Awn.

Along the way, Breq picks up another stray in the form of a 17 year old Lieutenant named Tisarwat assigned to Breq’s ship by Anaander – a covert ancillary of the Empress whose secret Breq discovers and addresses by removing Tisarwat’s implants.  In doing so, Tisarwat evolves into a pretty intriguing but mixed up character – mostly teenager, part 3,000 year old Anaander Mianaai – free to become whoever she chooses to be – a process similar to the one Breq has gone through over the course of the last 20 years.

The story moves pretty crisply along multiple axes – with Breq attempting to remedy a number of the societal inequities he finds upon arrival at Athoek, experiencing a tragically brief first encounter with a representative of the alien Presger, dealing with a threat from another ship and her Captain allied with the hostile aspect of Anaander and uncovering what appears to be a black market trade in shipped / stored human bodies to an as yet unidentified and future adversary.

It was a worthy sequel but it’s very transitional – setting everyone up for the third and conclusive volume.  It has none of the ambition of “Ancillary Justice”.  It’s humble, moves the story along, introduces interesting new characters and allows Breq to grow in her independence and further define herself – overall, good enough to leave me wanting to see how all this would end.

Which I did – moved immediately to “Ancillary Mercy” – the third book in the series.  Unfortunately, I finished “Sword” late on Thursday night and only made it through the first chapter before dozing off and ultimately calling it a night.  I had every intention of picking it up again on Friday evening and finishing out the story….but a funny thing happened on the way to the 2nd Chapter.

Last night, my wife and I were watching the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies and it left me thinking about how little I knew about both Korea and the history of America’s involvement there.  Combine that with what’s currently happening between the U.S. and North Korea and it reminded me that I’d not yet read Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter”.  I pulled it off the shelf and started in.  Somewhere around 2:00 AM, common sense prevailed and I crawled back to bed but I’m going to have to get back to this book.  It’s begging to be read.

Furthermore, I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d gone back and started rereading both Lovecraft and Howard.  I didn’t stay with Lovecraft – either because I’ve read so much within that genre recently or maybe because it just wasn’t holding up as well as I’d hoped – maybe both – but Conan stuck.  I continue to read a story or two a week – it was “The Phoenix On The Sword” and “The Scarlet Citadel” this week – and I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much I’m enjoying them.  There’s NOTHING complex or sophisticated about this character, these stories or Howard’s writing – they’re all just colorful and totally unrestrained.  After chopping up a roomful of adversaries and getting pretty chopped up in return – here’s a guy whose only thought is to demand wine and – upon having it delivered to him, observes “Good…slaying is cursed dry work” – or, after wrecking two separate armies and killing two opposing Kings, then moving on to decapitate an unsavory sorcerer only to see his body re-animate and run away – observes “A murrain on these wizardly feuds….give me a clean sword and a clean foe to flesh it in….damnation…what I would not give for a flagon of wine”.  Conan is a very simple guy and he solves his problems in a very direct and simple way and I can’t help but enjoy seeing him go about it.  So…I’m staying with Conan and I’ll likely reread the entire anthology – which is also going to pull me away from Ann Leckie.

This treasure also landed on my doorstep a few day ago – ordered when I decided to go back and reread Conan – and it’s tugging at me – a new Howard character and a whole new set of unread stories.  I also have a Solomon Kane collection scheduled to arrive within the week that’s also going to have to be experienced.

Finally, I still have “Midnight Tides” waiting for me to return – currently about a quarter of the way through.  Just like Nuke – I’m kind of all over the place right now – but it’s a good problem to have.  I’ll figure it out tonight and let you know what road I’ve taken.

First an apology – it’s been awhile since I’ve put up a post.  I’ve wanted to write but it’s just been one of those weeks – some travel but mainly just busy days – getting home a bit later and a bit more tired than usual.  Those times when I’ve tried to to read – I found myself waking up with a book lying on my chest or on my face – not having made much progress.  It’s taken me the better part of a week to finish this book.  The good news – WOW – what a book.  This one worked for me on every level and in every way – as good as anything I’ve recently read.

One more quick apology – this is probably going to be a long post and many of you who start reading won’t make it to the end.  But….if the post convinces even one more person to read this book who hasn’t already – I’m mindful of the fact that it’s been out for over 2 years and the author has already released Volumes 2 & 3 of the Trilogy (“Ancillary Sword” and “Ancillary Mercy”) – I’ll be happy.  I loved it and can’t help but want others to have the chance to enjoy it as well.

One final introductory comment – it’s probably obvious to anyone who’s read my posts that I’m not a professional writer, reviewer or critic.  I don’t have a technical or academic understanding of what makes a book “noteworthy” or “well-crafted” or “praise-worthy”.  Anyone who does will find much of what I write to be flawed but I don’t really care.  In his attempt to establish a legal threshold for obscenity, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart – in Jacobellis v. Ohio – wrote:

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (“hard-core pornography”), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

I may not be able to define worthy writing in a knowledgeable or technical way but I’ve read enough to know a good book or story when I see one – and this is one.

As I’m reading a new book, I pay attention to four things:  1)  the way in which an author’s use of words and the English language resonates with me – quality of the writing, 2)  the characters and the degree to which I relate to them – either positively or negatively – do they fascinate me, do I like them, do I hate them, 3) the world the author creates – is it comprehensible, is it complete, does it have depth, a history, a sense of past that flows into the present and forward into an understandable future, and finally – 4) the plot – does it all hang together.  I can enjoy any one of these in isolation and come away enjoying a book.  With “Ancillary Justice”, I really enjoyed all four.

First, the quality of the writing – Ann Leckie’s writing is sharp and sophisticated – I enjoyed the complexity of it – but also poetic and emotional.  It has a very rich feel without being pretentious or overburdened or verbose.  You really glide through the narrative and the words never get in the way.  It’s a Goldilocks read – neither too cold nor too hot – it’s just right.

I can be a judgmental reader – I spend a lot of time as I read thinking about how the author might have improved on what he or she had written – I pick out places where I think he or she made mistakes either in her grammar, word choice, sentence structure or the way in which he or she elicited an emotion.  I can’t remember a single time while reading this book where I had to pause and think about a different way to do what Ann had done – I really did think it was just right.

Secondly, the characters – it’s rare that I get through a book without finding at least one character – major or minor – that I consider to be poorly built.  I’ll use “The Collapsing Empire” as an example – subject of a prior post.  It was one that I enjoyed largely due to one character – Kiva Lagos.  The writing, the world and the plot were all fine but Kiva is the one element of the book that stands out and will bring me back to the series.  At the same time, I found several other characters in the book to be either one dimensional and boring – Cardenia and Marce Claremont – or overstated and caricatured – the Nohamapetans, particularly Ghreni.  Those characters weren’t enough to kill the book for me – I still enjoyed it – but it was one of the things that kept the book as a whole, at least for me, from being a compelling read.

I couldn’t find a character in this book that wasn’t compelling.  The Justice Of Toren AI, the primary character – a Justice Of Toren ancillary designated One Esk Nineteen but later redefining itself as an individual named Breq, Lieutenant Awn, the creator of and imperial authority within the Radch Empire Anaander Mianaai, Seivarden and everyone else in this book – I enjoyed and appreciated them all.  I found none to be overdone or cliche or caricatured – they all fit naturally within the world in which they lived and were well-rooted in the society and the religion the author created.  Breq, Seivarden and Anaander Miannai – both of her aspects – carry the story and I enjoyed all three (four if you count both fragments of Anaander Mianaai).  None of them are either too good or too bad – they’re believable products of the time in which they live, the history and stresses of the universe they inhabit and their genesis as beings – another Goldilocks outcome.  I found the way in which Ann Leckie incorporates a love of music as a defining characteristic into the personality of Justice Of Toren / One Esk Nineteen / Breq – not completely sure how to make the distinction – and uses it to move the plot – to be particularly intriguing.

Finally, I really enjoy the AI characters – Justice Of Toren, the AI controlling the Station hosting Omaugh Palace and Mercy of Kalr – in the same way that I enjoy the AI characters in Neil Asher’s Polity novels.  In some weird way, both authors have managed to make their AIs far more interesting and admirable than the humans they support and protect.  As you’d expect, they’re rational, dutiful and dependable.  When held up against their human foils, however, they also come off as more likable.  They engage you both intellectually and emotionally and they stand out as an attractive aspect within a society where too many things leave you with a bit of a queasy feeling.

The World and the Radch are complex and fascinating and built so as to leave you always wondering about the worthiness of the society.  At a macro-level, it feels regimented, rigid, authoritarian and a bit bland.  All is as Anaander Mainaai built it to be.  As you begin to see the world through the eyes and actions of the individuals, however – Breq and Seivarden, Awn, Skaaiat, Vel and even the other ship AI in the story – Mercy of Kalr – you see subtleties and ambiguities and stresses that disabuse you of the notion.  The omnipresent nature of the AIs and the directive and rigidly defned society established by the original Anaander Mainaai are balanced by the room for debate and disagreement and conflicting worldviews that the war between the two halves of the recently fractured Anaander allow.  As you read through the book, you see this as a society that has both utopian and dystopian elements.  In the end, Leckie’s world has both a richness and an ambiguity that I really enjoyed.

One element of her universe that really appealed to me is the way Ann Leckie incorporated aspects of the history and culture of Ancient Rome into the Radch.  Anyone who’s read past posts knows I have a real interest in classical history – my first read there was Gibbon’s “The History Of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”.  As I worked through the book, I couldn’t help finding little similarities – the way in which Radch grew through annexation, an economy and society built on geographic expansion, the state religion flexible enough to incorporate elements of the religions of annexed worlds – it all felt a little familiar.  When I read the interview with Ann Leckie at the end of the book, she specifically commented on this – acknowledging those elements – one small, additional source of gratification.

NOTE:  One aspect of the Radch that resonated with me – something that I didn’t become conscious of until I’d put up this post, made it to the gym and was halfway through my workout – were certain similarities to Japan.  I lived in Japan for 7 years and came away with a deep appreciation for many aspects of that culture – one of those being the importance of tradition and ritual in daily life.  So much of what the Japanese do every day with respect to personal interactions is ritualized – universally understood and accepted – not negotiable.  That ritualized component of personal interaction helps to ensure consistency, harmony and predictability.  As I was thinking about the book on the treadmill – I realized that the Radch had similarly ritualized components built into their society.  I have no idea whether Ann Leckie purposely wrote this into the book with Japan in mind or whether it’s an insight unique to me – due to my time in the country – but I think it’s one more small thing that made the book so fascinating for me.

Finally, the plot – and I’ll start by saying it’s complex.  For the first half of the book, it jumps back and forth between two stories separated in time by about 20 years.  The author also relates a couple of initially understated but ultimately critical historical episodes in the first half.  As all of this is happening, she really doesn’t make it easy for you – you have to have a little faith and stay with her.  It’s easy to see her writing the first half of the book – grinning all the way – thinking about the fun she’s having at her readers’ expense but also aware of the satisfaction she’ll leave them with by the end.  All of this comes together around the middle of the book – at which time the plot just starts to bloom like a rose.  She connects everything and moves you very pretty rapidly towards what I found to be an extremely satisfying conclusion.  The less objectionable fragment of Anaander prevails without ever proving itself to be particularly sympathetic, Breq survives and is offered an acceptable place within the Radch without having to experience a transformational epiphany that robs him of his uniqueness and Seivarden survives and grows through some of his / her fragility.  I just really enjoyed the way she challenged me and forced me to start connecting what were – initially – pretty random dots – then filling in the remaining blanks and bringing it all home.

One final comment – there were fun, little bits throughout the story that could have gotten lost among all the big things – but which turned out to be a source of joy for me.  Towards the end of the book – there’s a scene where Breq has commandeered a shuttle from Mercy of Kalr, escaping the Station in an attempt to communicate with the AI controlled warships in the vicinity of the station – when he engages the Mercy of Kalr AI in a conversation and requests her assistance.  In the middle of a critical conversation meant to save the Station and millions of lives, Breq takes the time to inform the Mercy of Kalr that the hinges of the shuttle hatch were not properly maintained, making the hatch difficult to open and close and that Mercy of Kalr should probably insist on better performance from it’s human crew.  Mercy of Kalr acknowledges its negligence, apologizes for the shortcoming and commits to improved future performance.  That fairly routine conversation at the most critical point in the plot just struck me as fun and funny and helped to completely endear the AIs to me.  How can you not applaud an author for having that kind of fun with their work.

This one was a win for me and I really hope anyone who hasn’t read it will – soon.  It was good enough to totally scramble my plan for the weekend.  Now that I’ve gotten this out, I have No choice but to start in on Book Two – “Ancillary Sword”.  If I enjoy the second volume as much as I’ve enjoyed the first, I’ll move straight to Book Three – “Ancillary Mercy”.  Nothing else is going to get read until I find out what happens to Breq and the Radch.

I promised a quick update on what my next read would be – the answer’s not as simple as I’d hoped it to be.  I mentioned in my post on the Lovegrove novels that I wound up on the floor of my library a little after midnight last Saturday pulling volumes off the shelves.  Klinger’s New Annotated Lovecraft compendium was one of the books I pulled….

….along with this.  After reading through 3 consecutive novels with Lovecraftian elements, I felt compelled to go back to the source.  It’s led me to keep both volumes out this week and I’m finding myself reading a tale or two every night.  Anyone who enjoyed these stories but hasn’t read them in awhile should go back and sample them again.  I enjoy them every bit as much as I did the first time but I’m also able to put them in perspective – I appreciate the Lovecraft’s style and his theme of human powerlessness and insignificance in the face of a ruthless and uncaring universe while recognizing but not being put off by his excesses.  His writing is like William Shatner’s Kirk – totally overdone – in a satisfying way.

I also pulled out this one…

…and have been doing the same – reading a story a night.  I tell myself I’m doing it because I’m looking for Lovecraftian elements that I missed when I originally read them but honestly – I just love Conan.  Life in his stories is simple.  No fear…never surrender….always victorious – what’s not to like about that.

In addition to all that, I’ve started reading Anne Leckie’s “Ancillary Justice”.

This novel won just about every award possible in 2015 – Hugo, Nebula, BSFA Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award and Locus Award.  I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to get to this but better late than never.

Long to short – I’ve got a decent sized pile by the bedside – these 4 plus “Midnight Tides”.  The plan is to finish “Ancillary Justice” and put up a post – then move back to Erikson.

Plenty of really great stuff to read – life is good! 🙂

I’ve been traveling for the last three days – trip to LA for a conference.  The frustrating aspect of traveling – no opportunity to write and post.  The gratifying part – plenty of time to read.  I mentioned in my last post on “After The End Of The World” by Jonathan L. Howard that these two books would be my next reads.  I took full advantage of the time on airplanes and in hotel rooms after work and managed to finish both – and man – am I glad I did.

I don’t try to use any kind of relative rankings for the books I write about – I think it forces you to make false choices.  The truth is – there are few books I read for which I fail to find something I like.  The challenge here would have been to find something about these books that I didn’t like.

Anyone who’s read a few of these posts knows I’ve loved H.P. Lovecraft’s work for a very long time – since first finding them in Middle School.  I’ve also always enjoyed Sherlock Holmes.  Not sure if this is true for everyone but I have a list of literary characters that I wish were either alive today or had lived – the ones that I’d give anything to meet and sit with for awhile – share a scotch or three – and talk with until the fire burns down for the night.  Holmes is one of them  Had I been born into his world – I would have wanted to be Watson.  He just fascinates me.

These books take the best of both of these amazing worlds and brings everything together in a way that gives the reader plenty of things to love.  He manages the merge in such a way as to preserve all of the things that made both of them so compellingly interesting as stand alones – no small feat.

He also manages to weave the supernatural / Cthulhu mythos elements into the timeline and progression of Holmes’ and Watson’s careers – as it developed across Watson’s stories – in a very unique and innovative way.  It shouldn’t spoil anything to say that Lovegrove managed to slot these tales into Watson’s earlier works by positioning the two – soon to be three – books as the three, long lost and recently recovered volumes penned by Watson at the end of his life – at a time when he felt compelled to tell the story behind the stories in all his earlier work.  Watson gives as a justification for his earlier literary subterfuge the need to spare his readership and society at large a knowledge of the horrifying, supernatural threats that he and Holmes repeatedly faced.  Lovegrove pulled it off in a pretty seamless way – very respectful of all the original work – paying tribute to many of the individual stories by shedding light on the supernatural elements which had been exorcised from Watson’s original stories.

He also represented both Holmes and Watson in a way that was very loyal to the way they’re characterized and grow over time in Doyle’s work.  In these books, Holmes is still the guy I’d want to spend an evening with in front of the fire – talking about anything and everything.  While this may represent a bit of a spoiler – Moriarty is also very well presented in the book – almost as fascinating as Holmes in a very cringe-worthy way.  Again, its not really a spoiler to say that these three books are a step-wise retelling of the true history of the conflict between Holmes and Moriarty – and the supernatural / Lovecraftian elements at the heart of that conflict.

Finally, the Lovecraftian elements were not disappointing.  The atmosphere of madness that is almost always present in Lovecraft’s stories is not so prevalent but that’s largely due to the strength and solidity of Holmes and Watson as protagonists.  Short to long – they’re just made of sterner stuff than those poor fools dragged down to insanity in Lovecraft’s stories due to their contact with or exposure to the Old Gods and their minions.

These are great, wonderful, fun books for anyone who enjoys Lovecraft or Holmes or both – maybe for those who haven’t experienced either.  I just loved them – they left me sitting on the floor of my library at 12:30 AM last night – pulling volumes of Lovecraft and Doyle and Howard off the shelves to check little things – googling little bits of Cthulhu lore – obviously not ready to acknowledge that I’d actually finished the books.  I can’t wait for the third and final volume in the trilogy to come out – despite the unavoidable, bittersweet understanding that finishing the third will represent the end to a journey that I truly enjoyed.

Now comes the hard part – what the heck am I going to read next?  Lovegrove’s books left me wanting to go back and read through my Lovecraft and Doyle collections.  I also have a five volume set of the complete works of Clark Ashton Smith – recently acquired but not yet read – that I’m tempted to start into.  After going back and doing a little research on Lovecraft and getting a better feel for the relationship he had with Robert E. Howard, I’m also a little tempted to go back and read through my Conan collection – with an eye out for the Lovecraftian elements in the book that just passed me by when I was reading them during my High School years.  I felt a strong enough pull in that direction that I wound up ordering hard cover editions of Howard’s Bran Bak Morn stories and his Solomon Kane series.  I would have purchased a volume of his King Kull tales but couldn’t find a hardcover edition.  I haven’t read any of these stories but I will as soon as the books arrive.  All of this sits on top of the need to finish “Midnight Tides” and / or get started on the dozen books I still have On The Nightstand.  I’ll make a decision before end of day and write something up as soon as I finish what I decide to start.

Cheers

The last few posts have been about books published years ago – volumes that have been waiting patiently in my library for me to pick them up.  I thought I’d spend time on something new tonight – likely something that most haven’t yet had the chance to read.  This is the second in a series by Jonathan L. Howard – a new author for me who’s writing his way into an old and familiar and favorite mythos.  The first of these two books – “Carter & Lovecraft” – was mentioned in my Holiday Reading List post on 12/11/2017 as something new that I really enjoyed.  “After The End Of The World” is the second in a series that uses the stories of the H.P. Lovecraft as a foundation in a really novel and fun way.

Quick upfront note – I’ve always really enjoyed H.P. Lovecraft.  I first found him during my Middle School – early High School Years.  The paperback editions of his stories were always on the shelf in the Science Fiction / Fantasy sections of every book store and for a young guy who had spent most of his time reading Heinlein, Asimov, Pournelle, Tolkein, Howard, Burroughs, Lieber and other pretty mainstream authors – they really didn’t seem like my thing.  I probably picked those books up a hundred times – read the back covers – and put them back on the shelves.  At the time, I was not a horror fan – I’m still not – books or movies – but there was something about the creepy cover art that kept bringing me back.

It was just a matter of time until I took the plunge and bought one.  Once I finally did, I was hooked.  The stories seem a little dusty and kind of quaint today but at the time, 12 years old me decided it was revelatory and magical stuff.  It was the edgiest stuff I’d ever read and I felt like I was striking out in a whole new and more adult direction.

As much as I came to enjoy the stories, I absolutely fell in love with the language.  I learned a whole new vocabulary reading Lovecraft’s stories – noisome vapors, cenotaphs, necropolis, charnel, miasmal, nacreous – words that I really wanted to use.  For a time, all of my creative writing was styled after Lovecraft – it was atrocious stuff but different enough to make me stand out to a series of English teachers and trick them into believing that I might actually have some talent.

I can’t say that my love of the mythos has faded to any significant degree over time.  I continue to look for modern authors that use elements of Lovecraft’s work as a basis for their stories – one great example being Charles Stross’ Laundry Files novels.  If you haven’t read these – make it a priority.  They are funny and fun and creepy all at the same time.  I have to wonder if the success of the Laundry Files has brought people back to Lovecraft – given that I’ve seen and read a lot of new releases based on his work recently – two in particular being “The Ballad Of Black Tom” – a retelling of Lovecraft’s story “The Horror At Red Hook” and “Lovecraft Country” – both really worth a read.

All of that was just a round about way of explaining why it was inevitable that I’d eventually buy and read these books.  When I saw the “Carter & Lovecraft” title, I had to have it and I wasn’t disappointed.  The stories are tight and well-written, the characters are well developed and the author manages to weave H.P. Lovecraft himself into the books and finds a way to pull his mythos into the modern world.  There’s all sorts of neat stuff in the first two books – Fomorians – the Innsmouth kind, Old Gods, Thule Society Nazis, British commandos and an alternate future where the Germans won WWII and became a respectable world power.  I’ve probably had more fun with these books than with anything I’ve read since the last Laundry Files novel or the last of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels.  These are two that I’d highly recommend and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

One final note – now that I’ve finished Howard’s first two books – I actually have two novels written by another author – new to me – named James Lovegrove.  They’re the first two volumes in a series called the Chtulhu Casebooks.  The first is titled “Sherlock Holmes And The Shadwell Shadows” and the second is titled “Sherlock Holmes And The Miskatonic Monstrosities”.  I don’t know how you could fail by putting one of my favorite literary characters of all time together with Lovecraft’s mythos – couldn’t be happier about the prospect of digging into these.  I’ll be starting these two tonight and I’ll let you know how it goes.