Best books I read in 2012

It's been a little while since I posted here. I may talk about why in a later post, but I thought I'd get things moving again with some words on the best books I read in 2012.

Science Fiction: Soft Apocalypse, by Will McIntosh

I read Soft Apocalypse way back in January, and it stayed with me throughout the year. Far and away the most frightening apocalypse I've ever read, perhaps because it was so thoroughly believable. My memory is of a gentle, sometimes self-deluding central character, striving for companionship during a societal collapse that is as casual as it is horrifying.

There was a lot of talk this year about science fiction losing its faith in the future. I haven't fully unpacked my feelings on that -- I probably never will -- but it is perhaps telling that Soft Apocalypse was the most convincing science fiction novel I read in 2012. 

Honourable mentions: I want to call out two books for honourable mentions at more length than usual, because I didn't talk about either of them earlier in the year. The first is God's War, by Kameron Hurley. God's War is Hurley's first book, and so it isn't without its flaws. It is, however, one of the most inventive (and brutal) things I read in 2012. It felt a bit like reading Vandermeer's Finch or Mieville's Perdido Street Station for the first time -- unexpected, weird, and sort of inspiring. I look forward to reading more from Hurley.

The second book I want to mention is Jack Glass by Adam Roberts. Roberts was a bit of a puzzle for me -- in 2012 I started to notice people talking about him as if everyone already knew how good his books were. But if that was the case, how had I never heard of him?

I've since read two of his books -- By Light Alone and Jack Glass -- and he really is that good. Jack Glass, his thirteenth novel, is an impressive deconstruction of golden-age science fiction and detective stories. It's very readable, and if you wanted you could leave it at that. There's a lot more going on, though; it seemed to me that Roberts wasn't so much playing with genre tropes as he was actively interrogating them. Great stuff.

After you've read the book (and you should), take a look at this fascinating review by Jonathan McCalmont. 

Fantasy: Railsea, by China Mieville

It almost feels like cheating to put a China Mieville novel in my best of the year. We all know he's good, and we all know I like his books. But Railsea was probably the most fun I had all year. It's Mieville's take on Moby-Dick: Sham ap Soorap rides aboard the moletrain Medes, hunting her captain's great nemesis, the monstrous mole named Mocker-Jack. 

There's a little bit of latter-day Quentin Tarantino in Railsea, in that Mieville is being pretty self-indulgent. If that sort of thing frustrates you, so might Railsea. I found Mieville's affection for his source material, and the fun he was having, completely charming.

Honourable mentions: Dinocalypse Now, by Chuck Wending; The Drowning Girl, by Caitlin R. Kiernan. Which maybe isn't really a fantasy novel. Whatever it is, it's excellent.

Other Thing: The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead

Okay, so this is another cheat. You'll find The Intuitionist in the literary fiction section of the book store, but I think you could make a very solid argument that it is equally a genre novel. Its plot is science-fictional, with a healthy dose of mystery: an ideological war between two schools of elevator repair, the Intuitionists and the Empiricists, and a search for the perfect elevator. But its prose, and its concern with race relations and social progress, are pure literary fiction.

However you want to label it -- and really, does it matter? -- The Intuitionist is a wonderful book. It may have helped that I read it while I was visiting New York (where it is apparently set), but I suspect I would have enjoyed it anywhere.

Honourable mentions: This is how you lose her by Junot Diaz; Atomic Robo, written by Brian Clevinger and drawn by Scott Wegener.

The Scar month: the end (of the book)

To celebrate the tenth birthday of The Scar by China Mieville, I'm re-reading it and posting about the experience. There will be spoilers!

Currently at: finished!

June is over, but I've got a few more things I'd like to say about The Scar. So I've put it to a vote, and The Scar month is being extended until I'm done. Today, I'd like to talk about the way the book ends. Because there are bits about it that I really like, bits I dislike, and bits that I find baffling. (Beware: lots of major plot spoilers in this post!)

First, the grindylow. China Mieville seems to enjoy subverting reader expectations, and I really loved the way the grindylow subplot played out. Throughout the novel they were hunting down Armada using prototypically monstrous methods: kidnap, torture, dark magic. Everything about them seemed supernaturally evil, and indeed that's how everyone in the book thought of them. So it seemed perfectly reasonable that they would go to all of that effort to find the floating city for primitive, idolatrous reasons.

That's why it was so great when it turned out that their motives were completely ordinary -- they were simply trying to protect their borders. The magical artefact that everyone assumed they were so desperately seeking was basically irrelevant. They were completely misunderstood, ascribed mystical motives, because the civilised people of Armada feared what they didn't understand.

That was one of the book's successes. The actual climax, in which the city made its final push towards The Scar, was... Well. I don't really know what it was. Reaching The Scar was the culmination of The Lovers' plan. Every action taken in the book was striving towards or against that goal. It was meticulously foreshadowed, the title of the whole novel, and I'm not convinced Mieville really knew what to do with it.

I think perhaps Mieville trapped himself. After all that effort, he had to take us to The Scar. But the thing that he conceived was so vast, so deadly, that there was no way that voyage could end in anything but total destruction.

So he cheated. He sent us a familiar character from some alternate dimension, some version of the world where Armada did reach The Scar, and was ruined. That way Mieville could fulfil his promise, and still save his characters. It all makes sense in the context of the novel. But it's not entirely satisfying.

In Perdido Street Station, the book that preceded The Scar, Mieville made a pretty impressive argument against the conventional, comfortable ending in epic fantasy. I wonder if he was again trying to write against reader expectations? The thing is, in The Scar my expectations were of disaster. Subverting the happily-ever-after was satisfying, whereas subverting the disaster feels more like failing to follow through.

Finally, we come to the question that I always have when I finish reading The Scar, and which I always forget before I pick it up again. In the epilogue, Bellis Coldwine discusses her perspective on what has happened. She has come to realise that she has been manipulated throughout by Uther Doul, but she can't decide whether he was following a grand plan, or acting opportunistically. 

This always leaves me wondering if the book is actually about her, or if it is actually about Doul. I'm not entirely sure why it matters; surely the book can be about both of them? Perhaps after following Bellis for so long, I finally end up identifying with her feelings of manipulation. She claims to willingly renounce any possibility of ever really understanding, but I'm not sure that I can.

I think that says something about how thoroughly The Scar captures my imagination, that I keep wondering about this after it's done. It's probably also part of the reason I keep re-reading it.

The Scar month: an illustrative example

To celebrate the tenth birthday of The Scar by China Mieville, I'm re-reading it and posting about the experience. There will be spoilers!

Currently at: chapter 43, page 676

Shortly after my previous post on the characters in The Scar I came across a paragraph that illustrates what I was getting at. It's on page 589 of my edition, just at the start of chapter 37. In the immediately aftermath of the war with the New Crobuzon fleet, Bellis is wandering the streets of Armada, trying to process what has happened:

It was quite unfair, Bellis thought nervously, that so few of her own haunts had been harmed. By what right was that? She, after all, did not even care.

Mieville is writing in the tight third person here, and no doubt Bellis thinks she doesn't care. But it's not true. She does care, and I know she cares, even though she hasn't figured it out yet. (Actually, I think she knows, but she's not ready to accept it.) If the characters didn't have depth, then I wouldn't be able to draw that conclusion from the words Mieville has written.

Honestly, I think that's missing a bit from some of Mieville's later novels. I don't feel like he spends enough time developing his characters' internal lives for me to be able to pick up on contradictions like that. His focus, I suppose, is elsewhere.

The Scar month: Bellis

To celebrate the tenth birthday of The Scar by China Mieville, I'm re-reading it and posting about the experience. There will be spoilers!

Currently at: chapter 32

One of the more common criticisms of China Mieville's novels is that the characters are a bit weak. I think there's something to this. I can't, for example, remember the names of the main characters in Embassytown, Kraken, or The City & The City*, although I hasten to add that it didn't really affect my enjoyment of those novels. There's more than enough going on to keep me thoroughly engaged.

It is therefore interesting to me that I think one of the real strengths of The Scar is Bellis Coldwine, the lead character. I find her compelling, for a whole bunch of reasons. For a start, she's not your typical epic fantasy heroine**: she's a linguist, an adult (and, I suppose you could add, a woman). She's closed off and private, tightly controlled, independent and intelligent. And, frankly, not particularly likeable.

It's quite possible that choosing Bellis as the main point of view character contributes to the feeling of strangeness that I find so appealing about The Scar. It's also an excellent demonstration of the fact that you don't need to like a character to want to keep reading about her. The key there, I think, is that she is competent, clever and strong -- I may not like her, but I can certainly admire her. And understand her.

(This is the part where I point out that I've been trying to find time to write this post since about chapter ten, some three hundred pages ago. Since then, Bellis has become no less compelling, although I'm beginning to wonder at her interactions with the men in the novel. She's not a passive character, but it is beginning to seem like a lot of the doing is being done by the men around her. Tanner Sack delivering the message to the Dreer Samheri when Bellis couldn't find a way to do it herself, Silas Fennec preparing that message, Uther Doul feeding Bellis information for reasons that are so far unclear.

Perhaps it is relevant that Bellis is a translator. She's the conduit through which so much of the plot flows. In that sense, maybe it's appropriate that the people around her are the main actors. Being trapped by implacable forces is a bit of a theme not just for The Scar, but all of the Bas-Lag novels. Still, I'm beginning to be a little troubled by Bellis' lack of agency. Fortunately, I don't actually recall exactly how the book ends, so she may have her moment yet.)

I wonder if the reason that Mieville's earlier novels do better with characterisation is that they're so much longer. There's plenty of room for character development, whereas in his shorter subsequent novels the riot of ideas and plot pushes out the characters.

Or maybe -- and I'm really just guessing here -- it's that The Scar has a small ensemble of point of view characters: the Remade engineer Tanner Sack, and the young tough Shekel. I haven't mentioned them much because they play a smaller role than Bellis, but one of the things they do is illuminate Bellis' character through contrast. Shekel, so eager to learn to read, softens her. And Tanner Sack's love for the city that freed him throws Bellis' desperate need to be away from it into relief.

If you're reading along with me, I'm interested to hear what you think about Bellis and the other main characters in the book. Are you finding them as compelling as I am? 


* Although Sham ap Soorap in Mieville's newest, Railsea, is pretty memorable.

** I feel I should add here that I am not hugely well read in the epic fantasy (sub-)genre. I might be missing all sorts of great stuff, in which case I welcome recommendations!

The Scar month: swept up

To celebrate the tenth birthday of The Scar by China Mieville, I'm re-reading it and posting about the experience. There will be spoilers!

Currently at: chapter 8

Alright, I confess: The Scar's tenth birthday is just an excuse. I'm actually re-reading it because I love it. And I'm re-reading it now because I'm trying to think critically about the books and authors that I love. What are they doing that makes me love them so much?

I was a little worried that re-reading The Scar with this sort of thing in mind might damage my enjoyment of it. But I can see now that isn't going to be the problem. The problem is that I'm not sure I can read it critically at all. I was barely a tenth of the way in when I first noticed that I'd stopped thinking about what I was reading, and I was just -- happily, enthusiastically -- enjoying it.

There's probably an observation to be made about how I only fully engaged when Mieville stopped chopping and changing his tenses and narrative modes. I also suspect that my engagement has a lot to do with the way he handles mysteries and puzzles. They come at a faster pace than I'm used to in epic fantasy, and their pattern of resolution seems unusual. Apparently large mysteries are solved quickly, whereas smaller ones tantalisingly linger.

Whatever it is, I've been thoroughly swept up. There's every chance that all I'll be able to do for the rest of the novel is gush uncritically. I think I'm okay with that, but you have been warned!

Are you reading along too? Has it grabbed you already?

The Scar month: setting out

To celebrate the 10th birthday of The Scar by China Mieville, I'm re-reading it and posting about the experience. There will be spoilers! 

Currently at: chapter 2.

The Scar month started a little slowly for me. Partly that's because life got in the way, but it's also because I forgot about the effort I need to put in to getting started on door-stop fantasy novels. The Scar starts with the traditional descriptions of scenery and setting, and I've never found that hugely engaging. Early on, those details tend to slide straight out of my memory, and my focus wanders.

It's also a somewhat disorienting beginning, with a prelude in third-person present tense, then a third-person past tense opening chapter introducing the main character, broken up with a letter she's writing, and concluding with a first-person present tense narrative from a different, unnamed character. It feels a little rough, and the prose perhaps a bit forced.

Having said all that, I'm already seeing the thing that hooked me the first time around. The tone that Mieville sets in the opening chapters is dirty and industrial and chaotic. The structure may remind me of epic fantasies, but the mood is different, more like a horror novel. I think that's what grabbed me: the sense that something familiar had suddenly been made strange.

I also think it was a good choice to begin with a voyage away from New Crobuzon. That city was at the heart of the previous book in the series, Perdido Street Station, and by breaking with it so explicitly Mieville makes it very clear that The Scar is something completely new.

If you're reading along too, or have read it in the past, what are (or were) your opening impressions?

The Scar in June

The Scar by China Mieville was first published ten years ago next month. I'm intending to celebrate its anniversary by re-reading it, and posting about the experience here. If you fancy reading along with me, I'd love to have you on board. I'll be starting on June 1st, and reading until I'm done, so you've got a week from today to find yourself a copy!

(I was going to post the blurb, but I've just re-read it. It's pretty terrible. Don't let it put you off!)

Despite some pretty fierce competition the past few years, I think The Scar is still my favourite fantasy novel. It's one of a very few books that I've re-read; next month will be my fifth time. I'm particularly keen to give it another go now because I haven't read it since I started trying to think critically about the genre. Will it stand up? Will it excite me the same way it did a decade ago? Let's find out!

Mieville, Embassytown, Priest, etc.

I had always intended to spend this evening writing a blog post about why I love China Mieville's books, but then Christopher Priest posted his vicious (but wonderfully delivered) opinions on this year's nominees for the Arthur C. Clarke award. Embassytown [2011] by China Mieville is among them. I really enjoyed it. Christopher Priest clearly did not.

It seems a bit silly to let this stall me, but it has. Priest is significantly less qualified than I am to judge what I like, and that is really all I'm ever talking about here. Some of what he wrote is just plain nasty, and generally I prefer not to dwell on that sort of thing. What's stopped me in my tracks, though, is that there are some ways in which I completely agree with him, and that's caused me to ponder more carefully all the things I think I disagree with.

So the post I had intended to write is now going to be interspersed with some thoughts on where my opinions differ from Christopher Priest's, and perhaps also where they align. It's worth noting before I start that I'll be focussing specifically on Priest's comments about Mieville and Embassytown; I have read none of the other books that Priest mentions in his post.

My favourite thing about China Mieville's novels is that they make science fiction or fantasy feel lively and new. I think he does this partly by messing around with genre tropes (sometimes specifically undermining them, as in Perdido Street Station [2000] and Un Lun Dun [2007]), and partly through sheer, gleeful inventiveness. The things he writes are at once recognisably of their genre, and energisingly different from anything I've read before.

(It is interesting to me that I appear to be attracted to Mieville's writing for his indebtedness to the genres in which he writes, whereas Priest considers this a deficiency: "he is restricting his art by depending too heavily on genre commonplaces". I think that Priest would argue that this implies I am an unsophisticated reader of genre fiction, and though I'm reluctant to agree, he may be right.)

I'm also really fond of Mieville's prose. I think it's pretty clear that he is in love with words, and that's a wonderful way to be. You can see it most overtly in Un Lun Dun's word games, but I think it's there in everything he's written. The names he has chosen for space travel and the people who perform it in Embassytown, for example, are clever and rich with meaning. I enjoy reading his words, on a line by line, sentence by sentence basis, and that's actually quite rare in science fiction and fantasy.

("A better writer would find a more effective way of suggesting strangeness or an alien environment than by just ramming words together," says Priest. This criticism is pretty much directly opposite to my views on Mieville's writing. I think I'm of the opinion that word games are fun, and that names for things matter. Besides which, it's quite possible to ram words together badly, or uninterestingly, and I think that Mieville does neither. But it seems to me that Priest's contention that "it is exactly this use of made-up nouns that makes many people find science fiction arcane or excluding" might be worth further thought.)

Perhaps my enjoyment of Mieville's books comes down to this: they are heavily informed by his love for the literary weird. Weird fiction, it seems to me, is about making the familiar appear strange. I find the idea of it intoxicating, and I think Mieville is an expert at it. There are few feelings that I enjoy more than "I never thought of that" (or, perhaps "I never thought of it like that"), and that sense pervades Mieville's novels. 

(Now here's the part where I point out that I have not loved every one of Mieville's books. Un Lun Dun was fun enough while I read it, but not much more than that, and I found Kraken [2010] difficult to fully engage with. While I enjoyed The City & The City [2009] very much, and still consider it a worthy Best Novel Hugo winner in 2010, it didn't excite me to quite the same extent as his other novels.

Two of Priest's criticisms may be relevant here. The first is that Mieville's characters are "weakly drawn". I'm not sure I'd be so emphatic about it, but I think there's some merit to the observation. It pains me to admit it, but I don't think I can recall the names of any of the characters in Mieville's novels. Bearing that in mind, it may be significant that the three books I didn't love as much were in genres I have no strong feeling for -- YA urban fantasy, urban fantasy, and the crime novel respectively. Priest again: "he is restricting his art by depending too heavily on genre commonplaces".)

So there you have it. I'm not actually sure if this post has been particularly readable. If not, I apologise. I had intended to talk about my love for China Mieville's books, but Christopher Priest's outburst turned it into a conversation with myself about my own opinions. I don't know if they've been firmed up, but they've certainly been challenged, and that can only be a good thing. 

(As a counterpoint to Priest's evident distaste for Embassytown, I recommend reading this review of the book by another grand master of the genre, Ursula K Le Guin. Her reaction to Mieville's neologisms is particularly interesting: very different from Priest's, and much closer to mine.)

Incidentally, this June is the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Scar [2002]. It remains my favourite China Mieville novel, and so I might take that as an excuse to re-read it, and talk about the experience here. If anybody felt like reading along with me, I'd enjoy the company!

One of China Mieville's tricks

I'm building up to trying to say something interesting about Embassytown [2011] and China Mieville. That's going to be difficult for me. The temptation is just to gush uncritically. While I'm working on that, I thought I'd allow myself a very little gush over a world-building trick that Mieville uses, which I just adore. 

Every now and again, Mieville mentions names for things -- pieces of technology, or types of magic, or places -- that have nothing to do directly with the story. They often don't ever appear again. They're rarely explained or clarified. They just exist, as far as I can tell, to hint at a world outside the story. Here's an example from Embassytown:

Those who serve on exot vessels, who learn to withstand the strange strains of their propulsion -- of swallowdrives, overlight foldings, bansheetech -- go even farther with less predictable trajectories, and become even more lost.

That bit I've highlighted, that's what I'm talking about. Sentences like that make me kind of giddy. What are swallowdrives? How might they work? Who might use them? But -- deliciously -- we never hear about them again.

It's quite possible that everyone does this in their science fiction and fantasy, and I just don't notice. If that's the case, then it's probably because there's an art to the way Mieville does it. It's not just a random combination of words, but one carefully chosen to provoke exactly my response. 

Names matter. And China Mieville is very good at naming things.