Miscellany — September 2010

As I writhe in the torrid throes of my thesis, I can take consolation only in the fact that I have done a lot of interesting reading. Since I last posted, here's a quick rundown (in more ways than one):

1. Management of Success: Singapore Revisited, edited by Terence Chong, is a quirky fat book in which many people say obliquely interesting things about the island city-state nation entity which so many love to hate or hate to love. And it is fun, like eating corn chips till you feel bloated is fun.

2. The big anthology, Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, is a delight to read. The problem with a title like that is that you would expect nothing but the very best; this means you become more critical than the stories deserve. They are mostly very good. But I wouldn't buy a second copy.

3. On the other hand, Frank Beddor's Arch Enemy, the final part of his Looking-Glass Wars trilogy, is not a bad conclusion because I had much lower expectations. I thought the whole thing would fall apart, being a retelling of the Alice in Wonderland thing. But it hung together and finished nicely. I wouldn't go through it again either, though.

4. The one outstanding book of my last few weeks, however, was Adam Roberts's Yellow Blue Tibia. It is not quite an alternate-history novel; rather, it is something odd and unusual all to itself. It purports to tell a story of Soviet Russia and events hiding out of sight behind the Cold War. It is not the supernatural tale that is Tim Powers's masterpiece, Declare. But it has UFOs in it!

5. Robert Charles Wilson's Julian Comstock is a wholly different kettle of fish. It is a post-apocalypse American novel which is a nice novel, but that is all it is. Young rustic hero, tragic hero, good life, bad end, and some odd undertones which you can discover for yourself.

6. James D MacDonald's The Apocalypse Door is a good one-off adventure tale. Think noir detective and creepy plot to destroy the world through the use of extra-dimensional monsters. Well, sort of.

7. God's Demon, by Wayne Barlow, was another highlight. Barlow is an illustrator with a rather potent imagination. He's brought this to bear on the problem of what would happen in Hell if a demon lord should repent and seek to return to Heaven. There are many interesting ideas here, although it's not a particular beautiful novel.

8. David Hewson's The Blue Demon has nothing to do with hell or demonic entities; rather, it is an intense look at the left over and very dangerous remains of the Cold War in Italy. Everyone comes off looking bad, dead, or very annoyed. If you want a really good spy thriller with murders and assassinations, as well as political secrets and uncomfortable people, this is it. Oh yes, it's a Nic Costa novel too.

9. The Equivoque Principle and The Eleventh Plague by Darren Craske are Victorian conspiracy adventure novels of the gaslight/steampunk affiliation. They are entertainments, pure and simple. Not the best, but enough for a slow evening. An interesting hero, though. More than meets the eye.

10. The quirkiest book I've read recently is Tim Davys's Amberville: A Mystery. It is about a city of stuffed toys, and what happens when they start getting killed. You have to read it to believe it. This isn't Toy Story or Who Killed Roger Rabbit? This is more sinister than either one.

11. I've also managed to complete Peter Hamilton's The Dreaming Void. Don't get me wrong; I love space opera and I think Peter Hamilton's thick tomes (remember The Neutronium Alchemist et al.?) are excellent reads. But they take way too much effort. Nobody else takes that many pages to spin grandiose plots. That said, his Void trilogy looks good all round, although it might be better for you to spend your time reading a combination of David Brin, Alastair Reynolds, and Iain M Banks.

And that's more or less it for now.