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.
Showing posts with label the intuitionist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the intuitionist. Show all posts
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Monday, April 23, 2012
Holiday reading: four reviews
I brought four books with me to New York. I've finished reading them, so I thought I'd write some short reviews. In the order that I read them:
In the Mouth of the Whale [2012], Paul McAuley
In the Mouth of the Whale is the third book in McAuley's Quiet War series. I have read the previous two (The Quiet War [2008] and Gardens of the Sun [2009]), and I didn't love them. So why did I bother to read the third one?
The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun were both very closely related. Same characters, with the action in the second basically picking up exactly where the first left off. In the Mouth of the Whale, however, jumped ahead something like 200 years, and moved the action out of our solar system to Fomalhaut, 25 light years away. I thought that was an interesting choice for the third book in the series, and that's why I decided to give it a go.
The book concerns three characters, and the ways in which their stories intersect with a war over Fomalhaut's gas giant. The Child is being raised in a post-catastrophic climate change Amazon, groomed for a mysterious future task. Ori, a genetically engineered slave, works on a scientific research station orbiting the gas giant, and gets swept up in the war to possess it. And Izak, a disgraced outcast who travels Fomalhaut clearing networks of viruses ("harrowing hells"), learns of a conspiracy threatening the Library of Worlds.
For the majority of this book, I felt like I'd finally found a Paul McAuley novel that I could love. It has all of the action and big ideas of good space opera, with more than a passing nod to real, or at least plausible, science. I particularly enjoyed the way McAuley imagined its virtual worlds; I think writers of far-future space operas often fail to consider the ways in which the genre's tropes are affected by digital technology.
Unfortunately, the last quarter or so of the book left me a little cold. It felt like an early draft. Like McAuley knew where he wanted to go, but wasn't entirely sure how to get there smoothly, and didn't have time to sort it out. The prose seemed less natural, with more info-dumps. It was a shame, because I enjoyed the rest of the book so much.
The Intuitionist [1999], Colson Whitehead
Unsurprisingly, this was the stand-out read in this batch. The Intuitionist is about Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector. Though it is never named, the setting is obviously meant to be New York (or perhaps some alternate-world version of New York?), late in the 19th century. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist; she inspects elevators by riding them, and getting a sense of how well they are operating. The opposite (dominant) school is the Empiricists, who inspect elevators by examining their machinery using the traditional tools of engineering.
The book begins with an elevator accident in one of Lila Mae's buildings. Before long, she's swept up in Department of Elevator Inspectors politics and the ideological war between the Empiricists and the Intuitionists. All of which is further complicated by hints that the father of Intuitionism, Fulton, may have invented the perfect elevator -- the "black box" -- before he died.
The Intuitionist was the most literary of the four novels reviewed here. It is rich with metaphor, particularly (although not exclusively) for social and racial progress. But it isn't only literary fiction. The plot has elements of a noirish mystery: dirty politics, organised crime and murky motivations. I'd also argue that the premise -- two warring philosophies in a powerful Department of Elevator Inspectors chasing the plans for the ideal elevator -- is quite science fictional. That's one of the things I love about it. You could read it all sorts of different ways.
It's not perfect. Sometimes I felt like Whitehead wasn't entirely in control, of his metaphors and his ideas. And, as I mentioned previously, I was occasionally distracted by the rhythm of the words. Nevertheless, I think this was a remarkable book. I'm very glad to have read it, and I think you should too.
The Kingdom of Gods [2011], N. K. Jemisin
This was also the third book in a series, called The Inheritance Trilogy. I enjoyed the first book, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms [2010], very much. Its sequel, The Broken Kingdoms [2010], was also very enjoyable, although I felt it lacked some of the flair of the first book. I feel exactly the same way about the third book, The Kingdom of Gods.
I honestly don't think I can summarise the plot of this book and have it make any sense to someone who hasn't read the first two. The Three, who are foremost of the gods, are central to the novels. At the beginning of the first book, everything is out of balance: Bright Itempas the Dayfather has slain Enefa, goddess of the earth, and imprisoned Nahadoth the Nightlord. The first book is concerned with redressing this imbalance. In the second, Itempas is attempting to atone for his sins. The third deals with the fallout of the conflict, when Sieh, trickster god and perpetual child, is somehow made mortal (and thus doomed to grow up).
And yet, those descriptions completely miss the point. The main characters in the first two books -- Yeine and Oree Shoth -- are mortals. They get caught up in the gods' lives, but neither is a passive participant. Jemisin writes powerful, interesting characters. Her endings are superb; they're never what I expect, and yet they manage to seem completely, naturally inevitable when they arrive. That makes for very satisfying reading.
In the first book, I particularly loved Jemisin's portrayal of the gods. They were flawed and complex, as befits any decent character, but I felt she also managed to really capture their alienness. As the series went on, I think that sense of alienness diminished. I'm not sure if that was something in Jemisin's writing, or if it was just my familiarity with them, but I felt it made the sequels slightly less compelling.
Having said all that, if you like fantasy at all, give The Inheritance Trilogy a go. My criticisms really are minor -- the good far, far outweighs the bad here, and it's rare that I'm still saying that three books into a fantasy series.
Undertow [2007], Elizabeth Bear
I have read three of Elizabeth Bear's science fiction novels -- the Jacob's Ladder series -- and I loved them very much. They were complex, fast-paced, and hugely inventive. I want to describe her prose as jagged; it's sometimes a bit challenging, but I really like it. I feel like I need to concentrate when I read her books, to keep track of everything, and that's a feeling I enjoy.
In many ways, Undertow was no different, except that somewhere about two-thirds of the way through I lost the thread. It might have been because there were too many characters (or too many forgettable names). Whatever the cause I could still follow the action, but I'd lost track of why it was happening. That made the reading a somewhat hollow exercise, and though I picked it up again by the end, it was too late.
Undertow is (blessedly) a stand-alone novel. It takes place on the damp colony planet Greene's World, and involves a revolution of the frog-like natives, a conspiracy inside the dominant Rim Charter Trade Company, an unusual use of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and a few other things besides.
I couldn't tell you if the book's failing was in the writing, or my reading. My feeling is that Bear might have slightly overstretched with this one -- too many concepts and plots rubbing together, none of them given quite the time they needed to fully develop. Fortunately, it still contained enough of the things I love about Elizabeth Bear's writing that my enthusiasm for reading more of her work is undiminished.
Okay, so maybe those reviews weren't so short after all. I enjoyed all four books. The best of them was clearly The Intuitionist, although it was too engaging to make perfect holiday reading. The Kingdom of Gods was an excellent read too; my issues with it really have more to do with my feelings on sequels than the actual book. Both In the Mouth of the Whale and Undertow were flawed, but with plenty to keep me interested. You could do worse than read either.
I also read the first quarter of Deadline [2011] by Mira Grant -- nominee for this year's Best Novel Hugo -- but I've decided to abandon it. I might talk about why next time.
In the Mouth of the Whale [2012], Paul McAuley
In the Mouth of the Whale is the third book in McAuley's Quiet War series. I have read the previous two (The Quiet War [2008] and Gardens of the Sun [2009]), and I didn't love them. So why did I bother to read the third one?
The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun were both very closely related. Same characters, with the action in the second basically picking up exactly where the first left off. In the Mouth of the Whale, however, jumped ahead something like 200 years, and moved the action out of our solar system to Fomalhaut, 25 light years away. I thought that was an interesting choice for the third book in the series, and that's why I decided to give it a go.
The book concerns three characters, and the ways in which their stories intersect with a war over Fomalhaut's gas giant. The Child is being raised in a post-catastrophic climate change Amazon, groomed for a mysterious future task. Ori, a genetically engineered slave, works on a scientific research station orbiting the gas giant, and gets swept up in the war to possess it. And Izak, a disgraced outcast who travels Fomalhaut clearing networks of viruses ("harrowing hells"), learns of a conspiracy threatening the Library of Worlds.
For the majority of this book, I felt like I'd finally found a Paul McAuley novel that I could love. It has all of the action and big ideas of good space opera, with more than a passing nod to real, or at least plausible, science. I particularly enjoyed the way McAuley imagined its virtual worlds; I think writers of far-future space operas often fail to consider the ways in which the genre's tropes are affected by digital technology.
Unfortunately, the last quarter or so of the book left me a little cold. It felt like an early draft. Like McAuley knew where he wanted to go, but wasn't entirely sure how to get there smoothly, and didn't have time to sort it out. The prose seemed less natural, with more info-dumps. It was a shame, because I enjoyed the rest of the book so much.
The Intuitionist [1999], Colson Whitehead
Unsurprisingly, this was the stand-out read in this batch. The Intuitionist is about Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector. Though it is never named, the setting is obviously meant to be New York (or perhaps some alternate-world version of New York?), late in the 19th century. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist; she inspects elevators by riding them, and getting a sense of how well they are operating. The opposite (dominant) school is the Empiricists, who inspect elevators by examining their machinery using the traditional tools of engineering.
The book begins with an elevator accident in one of Lila Mae's buildings. Before long, she's swept up in Department of Elevator Inspectors politics and the ideological war between the Empiricists and the Intuitionists. All of which is further complicated by hints that the father of Intuitionism, Fulton, may have invented the perfect elevator -- the "black box" -- before he died.
The Intuitionist was the most literary of the four novels reviewed here. It is rich with metaphor, particularly (although not exclusively) for social and racial progress. But it isn't only literary fiction. The plot has elements of a noirish mystery: dirty politics, organised crime and murky motivations. I'd also argue that the premise -- two warring philosophies in a powerful Department of Elevator Inspectors chasing the plans for the ideal elevator -- is quite science fictional. That's one of the things I love about it. You could read it all sorts of different ways.
It's not perfect. Sometimes I felt like Whitehead wasn't entirely in control, of his metaphors and his ideas. And, as I mentioned previously, I was occasionally distracted by the rhythm of the words. Nevertheless, I think this was a remarkable book. I'm very glad to have read it, and I think you should too.
The Kingdom of Gods [2011], N. K. Jemisin
This was also the third book in a series, called The Inheritance Trilogy. I enjoyed the first book, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms [2010], very much. Its sequel, The Broken Kingdoms [2010], was also very enjoyable, although I felt it lacked some of the flair of the first book. I feel exactly the same way about the third book, The Kingdom of Gods.
I honestly don't think I can summarise the plot of this book and have it make any sense to someone who hasn't read the first two. The Three, who are foremost of the gods, are central to the novels. At the beginning of the first book, everything is out of balance: Bright Itempas the Dayfather has slain Enefa, goddess of the earth, and imprisoned Nahadoth the Nightlord. The first book is concerned with redressing this imbalance. In the second, Itempas is attempting to atone for his sins. The third deals with the fallout of the conflict, when Sieh, trickster god and perpetual child, is somehow made mortal (and thus doomed to grow up).
And yet, those descriptions completely miss the point. The main characters in the first two books -- Yeine and Oree Shoth -- are mortals. They get caught up in the gods' lives, but neither is a passive participant. Jemisin writes powerful, interesting characters. Her endings are superb; they're never what I expect, and yet they manage to seem completely, naturally inevitable when they arrive. That makes for very satisfying reading.
In the first book, I particularly loved Jemisin's portrayal of the gods. They were flawed and complex, as befits any decent character, but I felt she also managed to really capture their alienness. As the series went on, I think that sense of alienness diminished. I'm not sure if that was something in Jemisin's writing, or if it was just my familiarity with them, but I felt it made the sequels slightly less compelling.
Having said all that, if you like fantasy at all, give The Inheritance Trilogy a go. My criticisms really are minor -- the good far, far outweighs the bad here, and it's rare that I'm still saying that three books into a fantasy series.
Undertow [2007], Elizabeth Bear
I have read three of Elizabeth Bear's science fiction novels -- the Jacob's Ladder series -- and I loved them very much. They were complex, fast-paced, and hugely inventive. I want to describe her prose as jagged; it's sometimes a bit challenging, but I really like it. I feel like I need to concentrate when I read her books, to keep track of everything, and that's a feeling I enjoy.
In many ways, Undertow was no different, except that somewhere about two-thirds of the way through I lost the thread. It might have been because there were too many characters (or too many forgettable names). Whatever the cause I could still follow the action, but I'd lost track of why it was happening. That made the reading a somewhat hollow exercise, and though I picked it up again by the end, it was too late.
Undertow is (blessedly) a stand-alone novel. It takes place on the damp colony planet Greene's World, and involves a revolution of the frog-like natives, a conspiracy inside the dominant Rim Charter Trade Company, an unusual use of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and a few other things besides.
I couldn't tell you if the book's failing was in the writing, or my reading. My feeling is that Bear might have slightly overstretched with this one -- too many concepts and plots rubbing together, none of them given quite the time they needed to fully develop. Fortunately, it still contained enough of the things I love about Elizabeth Bear's writing that my enthusiasm for reading more of her work is undiminished.
Okay, so maybe those reviews weren't so short after all. I enjoyed all four books. The best of them was clearly The Intuitionist, although it was too engaging to make perfect holiday reading. The Kingdom of Gods was an excellent read too; my issues with it really have more to do with my feelings on sequels than the actual book. Both In the Mouth of the Whale and Undertow were flawed, but with plenty to keep me interested. You could do worse than read either.
I also read the first quarter of Deadline [2011] by Mira Grant -- nominee for this year's Best Novel Hugo -- but I've decided to abandon it. I might talk about why next time.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Digestion
I've just finished reading The Intuitionist [1999] by Colson Whitehead. It was strange and great and I highly recommend it. It was also rich and complex, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure that the author was in complete control of all of his ideas all of the time. The prose was wonderful, but I was occasionally lulled by its rhythm so that I wasn't sure I was properly retaining meaning as I read.
In other words, I'm not sure I caught it all. I don't know if I completely understood everything the author was driving at. Much as I enjoyed it, I freely admit that I may not have fully appreciated its depth.
At times like these, I'm never entirely sure what to do. Sit and ruminate on it? Rush straight to the internet to see what other people have said about it? Re-read it straight away? I'd like to do the first thing, I think, but the temptation to do the second is very strong.
What do you do, in this position?
In other words, I'm not sure I caught it all. I don't know if I completely understood everything the author was driving at. Much as I enjoyed it, I freely admit that I may not have fully appreciated its depth.
At times like these, I'm never entirely sure what to do. Sit and ruminate on it? Rush straight to the internet to see what other people have said about it? Re-read it straight away? I'd like to do the first thing, I think, but the temptation to do the second is very strong.
What do you do, in this position?
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