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Fiction, Reviews

‘The Grace of Kings,’ by Ken Liu

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The Grace of Kings

Divination was an ancient art in the Islands of Dara, but no Tiro state was more dedicated to its practice than scholarly Haan. After all, Haan was the favored land of the god Lutho, divine trickster, mathematician, and seer. The gods always spoke ambivalently, and sometimes they even changed their minds in the middle of your asking them a question. Divination was a matter of ascertaining the future through inherently unreliable methods.

It isn’t often that a book leaves me in awe. But Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings has me thunderstruck.

Imagine a book written on the general Game of Thrones model. But imagine it set in a Chinese-based world.

And imagine that in this story, courage is not always futile, and virtue is not always defiled.

That’s The Grace of Kings. An epic in every sense of the word.

In the world of Dura, the emperor of the Reign of One Bright Heaven is a cruel megalomaniac. Thousands die doing slave labor for his hubristic personal monuments. Almost by accident, a revolt breaks out and spreads. Soon to be caught up in it are Kuni Garu, a commoner, a former gambler and bandit, and Mata Zyndu, descendent of heroes, tall and strong and himself a figure out of legend.

The two men’s gifts are different. Kuni Garu is intelligent and humane, always chiefly concerned with the welfare of others. Mata Zyndu is obsessed with courage, heroism, and ideals. Their complementary virtues make them leaders and brothers. They win the war.

And then it gets messy.

This is a book that will reward re-reading. I’m not at all sure I agree with its message (assuming there is one, or only one), but the story is eminently worth wrestling with. Much blood is spilled, but it’s not heartless. It’s rich in complex characters and moral ambivalence, but it’s not amoral.

I’m overwhelmed by The Grace of Kings. I highly recommend it. Not for young children.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Song of the Mockingbird,’ by Bill Cronin

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There are some books you read, and you salute the author’s intentions. But you have to conclude that his reach exceeds his grasp. So it is with Bill Cronin’s The Song of the Mockingbird.

The book opens in 1995, when bestselling author Jack McNamara’s life is falling apart. His creativity has been blocked for months, and a publisher’s deadline is fast approaching, after which he’ll have to return a million dollar advance. On top of that his wife, whom he loves, has left him. To prove to her he’s trying to solve his problem, he sees a therapist, who tells him his problems seem to center on the summer of 1961, when he was a young teenager.

1961 was a whiplash year for Jack. He sold his first short story, to his mother’s great pride. He suddenly learned he had a half-sister, who moved in and quickly became his best friend. And he acquired a girlfriend.

Then his hero, Ernest Hemingway, committed suicide, fulfilling a prophecy made by his emotionally abusive father. And his half-sister left suddenly, without explanation. And he lost his girlfriend due to a horrible crime.

Jack returns to his childhood home, Hollywood, Florida, to try to pick up the threads of the past and learn what really happened, what secrets were hidden from him.

I appreciate the attempt author Cronin makes with this book. But the novel we have is not the novel he’s trying to deliver.

First of all, when a narrator tells us he’s a bestselling author, and that Hemingway is his hero and role model, he needs to write a book that’s Hemingwayesque. The Song of the Mockingbird is not Hemingwayesque. Cronin is too wordy, too inexact with his word choices. His prose, especially his dialogue, does not snap with perfect lines as Hemingway’s does. He fires a verbal shotgun, not a rifle.

Also, an intended Big Surprise about 2/3 of the way through was obvious to me a mile off. And the book’s characters display conventional (for our day) reverse sexism – of the three male characters in a female-dominated book, one is a black man (who obviously gets a pass), and another is sheer stereotype, more bigoted than Archie Bunker. Every female is admirable.

I was interested enough in the story to read it through to the end. But I’m not interested enough to buy the two sequels. Nice try, but this is not a successful work.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Once Was Lost,’ by Matthew Iden

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Once Was Lost

This is the latest Marty Singer novel, and it just came out. I grabbed it right away. I’m enjoying this series by Matthew Iden, and Once Was Lost doesn’t disappoint.

Marty Singer, ex-Washington DC cop and cancer survivor, gets asked for a favor by his adopted daughter, Amanda. She works at a women’s shelter, and a guy who’s been doing handyman work there needs serious help. He was a low-level gangster, but he decided to testify against his boss, who’s also his uncle. Then he was betrayed, and he barely got away alive with his son when his police protectors were murdered. Now he’s had enough of gangsters and cops. He wants to run away and disappear. Can Marty help him? Can he keep the father and son safe from both the crooks and a (possibly) corrupt US marshal?

Well, it’s not easy. And Marty doesn’t much like his new “client,” Tommy Donlan, who’s arrogant, whiny, and ungrateful. But his kid is nice, and Tommy’s genuinely devoted to him. So Marty, along with Amanda, his girlfriend, and a computer geek buddy, gets to work trying to disappear Tommy.

It works. And then there’s a twist, and he needs to find the guy he’s helped to vanish.

As always, author Iden writes a tight, gripping tale. A particular excellence of this book is his development of the character of Tommy. Tommy’s very off-putting, but Iden skillfully gives him just enough humanity to make us root for him. It’s interesting that a book called Once Was Lost includes a character named Grace. There’s grace in this story, but also many reversals and surprises. Amazing, you might say.

Cautions for language. Recommended.

Reviews

Film review: Whit Stillman’s ‘Love & Friendship’

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Love & Friendship

I am fond of Jane Austen, though I’ve only read two of her novels. I’m a huge fan of Whit Stillman. So when I review his latest effort, Love & Friendship (which looks like it might be the big hit he’s deserved for so long) my perspective is that of viewing Austen-land from Stillman-land. This is probably fairly unusual.

People have noted the similarities between Stillman’s work and Austen’s books from the beginning. Metropolitan, his first movie, is self-consciously Austenian, a point paradoxically emphasized by the main character’s insistence that he’s never read Jane Austen because he prefers to read literary criticism of her. That’s an exquisitely Austenian comment on Austen.

And that’s what we also have in Love & Friendship, based on an Austen novella, Lady Susan. It’s meta-Austen. It tells its story, comments on the story, and laughs gently at its comments. It’s a lot of fun. It might be the perfect movie through which to introduce an intelligent consumer who’s not familiar with Austen’s work (I’m sure there are such people; I’m almost one of them) to her world.

Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale), the main character, is “the most notorious flirt in England.” A young and beautiful widow, we meet her in a silent-movie preface (with subtitles) in which she is driven from the home of a relation, having broken hospitality by seducing the man of the house (she thinks this response shockingly unjust). She then goes to stay with other relations, where she attempts to win a handsome younger man as her own husband while scheming to marry her virtuous daughter off to the stupidest man in England, James Martin (Tom Bennett). Bennett’s scenes are the funniest in the movie – he’s Wodehousian in his affable ignorance. He’s certain there are Twelve Commandments (general ignorance of the Ten Commandments is a running joke in this movie – a comment, I assume, on our own times). Lady Susan is Donald Trumpian in her invincible self-regard and lack of concern for the feelings of others. She’d be unbearable if forces of cosmic justice, acting behind the scenes, didn’t conspire against her machinations – something she would deeply resent if she were aware of it.

I liked Love & Friendship a lot, and suspect I’ll like it more when I’ve seen it a few more times (which I’m sure I will). I was pleasantly surprised by the crowd at the showing I attended – much larger than I expected, and mostly gray-haired, people who I suspect don’t go out to the movies much anymore.

Highly recommended. Not for kids, because much of the humor is sexually sophisticated (though not smutty at all), and because the vocabulary hovers at a high altitude.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Punctured,’ by Rex Kusler

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Punctured

Rex Kusler shows promise as a mystery writer. Punctured is the first in his Las Vegas Mystery series.

The hero is Jim Snow, a former Las Vegas police detective who left the job to become a professional card player. But he’s had an unlucky streak recently and is thinking about other possibilities. Then he gets a call from his sister Karen, who also lives in Vegas. Her husband has been murdered, and she knows the police suspect her and her (male) neighbor.

Jim has never been all that close to Karen, but he agrees to help. With the assistance of a woman cop and a homeless man, he starts sorting through a tangle of motives and scenarios.

Author Kusler has the talent to be a good novelist, I believe. He writes a good sentence (most of the time), and knows how to stage a good scene. His problem is character development. His way of revealing his characters is to have them spill their entire life stories, with or without prompting, the minute they first appear. It stretches credibility the first time, and becomes funny when repeated again and again.

There are several books in this series now, and one hopes the author has improved his technique. I’d be inclined to try the next book, but there was one scene of fairly heavy-handed feminism that put me off. But Punctured isn’t a bad book, if you overlook the character development problem. Cautions for language, but it’s not terribly bad in that regard either.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Raven Black,’ by Ann Cleeves

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Raven Black

I’ve been watching the latest series of the BBC dramatizations of Ann Cleeves’ Shetland mysteries, starring the character of Inspector Jimmy Perez. So I thought I’d check out the first novel in the series, Raven Black.

My verdict: I’m not sure.

First thing I noticed: The real Jimmy Perez in the books looks nothing like the guy who plays him on TV. In the book his appearance mirrors his exotic name (he’s a descendant of a sailor of the Spanish Armada, shipwrecked in Shetland). The guy on the show looks like he could be Norwegian. Or any kind of northern European.

Anyway, the story starts when a single mother living in the town of Lerwick discovers the body of a teenaged girl, strangled in the snow. Suspicion quickly falls on a man living nearby, a mentally retarded oldster who was once accused, but not convicted, of killing a little girl.

Inspector Perez is not convinced of the old man’s guilt. Eventually he learns that the girl was filming a documentary about life in the Shetlands, and a number of people didn’t like the direction her project seemed to be taking.

I’ve always been leery of women mystery writers, even (or especially) when they give us male protagonists. I didn’t dislike Raven Black, but I found it a little dull. In what seems to me the common fashion among female authors, the emphasis is more on relationships than action (even though the book is advertised as a thriller). I like relationships and personalities in my mysteries – in fact I insist on them – but I prefer the mix to be a little stronger on the danger side.

I may read more books in the series, or I may not. Not sure yet. I like the setting; it’s interesting to me for its own sake. Jimmy Perez, though, seems to me kind of a stick.

Fiction, Reviews

The Cross in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

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The third season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. came to a close this month on an interesting Christological note. I’ve been a fan of the show since the beginning and never had the complaints I read from others that it was too slow, didn’t have enough super powers, and whatever else. It’s a good show, and it didn’t get canceled like Agent Carter did (which is another good show, great show even, and it stinks that it’s cancelled.) The most recent season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. focuses on a vision one of the agents has of someone’s death, and central to that vision is a cross pendant.

I doubt I can keep from spoilers.

The season opens with the vision. A ship in space, the arc of the earth through the cockpit windshield, the cross pendant and necklace suspended in air, and a S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on a sleeve. No face or identifiers of who, if anyone, might be in that aircraft. We learn after a few shows that an Inhuman (a substitutionary word for “mutant” with its own extraterrestrial history) has the ability to foresee details of a death when he touches someone. This ability brings him into contact with Daisy Johnson (Chloe Bennet), the Inhuman agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who is working on putting together an Inhuman tactical team, and when they touch each other, they see the vision of the cross on a ship in space.

“I’ve seen the future,” she tells her team, “and one of us is going to die.”  Continue reading The Cross in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. →

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Resurrection,’ by Mike Duran

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The Resurrection

Occasionally I pick up a work of contemporary fantasy, especially if I have some acquaintance with the author. I know Mike Duran, author of The Resurrection, slightly through Facebook. He’s a writer who shows promise.

The Resurrection centers on a small, struggling church in a little California coastal town. The pastor is having a crisis of faith, and the elders are divided and contentious.

Ruby Case, one of a trio of faithful church members who’ve never quit praying for their congregation, attends the funeral of a teenage boy. To her amazement, a miracle happens, through her, and overnight she becomes the focus of a media frenzy, and her family is brought under stress, and even into danger. Meanwhile the pastor is being led, by an apostate seminary professor, into dangerous spiritual byways.

Author Duran has genuine gifts as a storyteller. There were moments in The Resurrection when I was authentically moved. The book reminded me, to be honest, of nothing more than my own novel Wolf Time (which is not to suggest in any way that it’s borrowed. It’s just the same kind of tale).

The author does need to work on the tools of his craft, though. He sometimes selects the wrong word, and he often throws verbiage at a passage when he would have done better to pare the words back and find the exact ones he wants for his desired effect.

But I read it all the way through, which I can’t say about a lot of Christian fantasy books, and as I told you it gave me some genuine thrills. So I recommend it. Suitable for most readers.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Wicked Flee,’ by Matthew Iden

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The Wicked Flee

One last Marty Singer novel for now. A new one’s coming out at the end of the month, but you’ll have to wait breathlessly for my review of that one.

The Wicked Flee starts with our hero sick in bed, not with the colon cancer he’s been fighting, but with the flu. But when his friend, undercover cop Chuck Rhee, shows up at his door saying his teenage sister has disappeared, Marty gets up and joins him in the hunt.

This installment differs from the previous books in jumping between points of view. Part of the time we’re with Marty and Chuck in their desperate hunt, part of the time we follow a couple sociopathic human traffickers, and much of the book is seen through the eyes of Sarah Haynesworth, a Maryland state police officer. In fact, Marty is kind of a secondary character this time around.

But the writing is excellent, and the tension ratchets up effectively. Recommended. Not too much graphic stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Spike,’ by Matthew Iden

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The Spike

Another Marty Singer novel by Matthew Iden. I liked this one particularly, since it revisited some themes from the first and best novel in the series, A Reason to Live.

At the beginning of The Spike, Marty is a witness to the murder of a businesswoman in a DC Metro station. He tries and fails to chase the murderer down, but the victim’s family hires him to find the killer. Prospects of success seem slim. The woman worked in real estate and seemed to have no particular enemies.

But as he investigates, Marty learns more than he wants to know about the seedy side of Washington real estate, a world of sweetheart deals where politicians and developers profit and poor people lose their homes. It gets increasingly difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

What I liked best about The Spike was that the themes of Marty’s cancer treatment and his relationships return to play a larger part than in the last couple stories. The theme of politics shows up this time around, which worried me (author Iten doesn’t say much about politics but I suspect his are to the left of mine), but I think it was handled pretty evenhandedly. The only corrupt politician whose party is mentioned is Republican, but on the other hand the majority of the political sleazebags are Washington, DC civic officials – and we all know what party those people would be.

So I happily recommend The Spike to the reader. Cautions for the usual.