Entry tags:

books, reviews

White Noise, 2006 Fantasy, Carte Blanche
I have a fair chunk of these, so I guess I'm going to split them into pre-trip and ones I read on the trip.


White Noise (Don DeLillo): I always expect stuff I think of as Literature to be serious, so then I read things like this and am totally startled. It reads something like the protagonist from The Mezzanine attempting to write a serious novel, or maybe like a less-bombastic version of Ignatius J. Reilly. Anyway, yeah, I dunno, there is no point talking about the plot or the characters or anything. The other characters all sound the same, but you get the impression this isn't because they are actually the same, but rather because the protagonist hears them all the same -- he is so self-centered that the world around him is forced to conform to his filters. The writing was clever but not really as funny as I would have liked for this kind of book (like, consistently amusing, rarely hilarious). Overall, while the book as a whole was enjoyable, it was so inconsequential I doubt I'll remember any of it in a month.

(I was pleased to see the origin of "entered the lounge. This time there was a brief pause before the mass wailing recommenced. %n? What kind of people were in control of this MUD? The crying took on a bitter and disillusioned tone." though.)


Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition (Rich Horton, ed.): I'm pretty out of touch with the modern sf short story scene, but if these are an accurate reflection, I can see why Patrick Nielsen Hayden was griping that there's not enough stuff being written that a 16-year-old can relate to. This collection had a lot of stories about people looking back with regret or over their life or working a crappy corporate job and while an occasional one of those is ok, I'd rather have more stuff with punching. Anyway, one line about each:

• Pip and the Fairies (Theodora Goss): Woman who grew up with fairies and then went back to the real world confronts her childhood; nostalgic but graceful.


• Comber (Gene Wolfe): Life in an unusual city on the brink. Gene Wolfe doesn't generally do anything for me and this didn't change my opinion.


• Three Urban Folk Tales (Eric Schaller): I dig the subject and I liked the minor twists but it seems like folk tales should have a little more bite.


• Wax (Elizabeth Bear): Anything Lord Darcy-esque is ok by me. This one is about a female version in 1700s early 20th century New York and while the mystery is simultaneously a bit too obvious and a bit too confusing, seriously, man, Lord Darcy. Good stuff. (In the end notes she says this is the start of a series -- anyone know if something else has been written?)


• The Emperor of Gondawanaland (Paul Di Filippo): Guy in a corporate setting hates his life, escapes from it. I am not averse to sweet things but this was excessively so.


• CommComm (George Saunders): Guy in a corporate setting hates his life, escapes from it. Only totally differently. This ends sweet but starts satirical and is the better for it.


• Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died (Samantha Henderson): Like the title suggests it has a number of nuggets of pure awesome, but they never came together for me into a coherent story.


• Fancy Bread (Gregory Feeley): Liked the authorial voice, found the plot totally dull.


• Sunbird (Neil Gaiman): Another Gaiman story where the twists are obvious and the pleasure is in the details. The plot feels a touch rickety and probably shouldn't be examined too closely.


• The Secret of Broken Tickers (Joe Murphy): The most delightful golem story I have ever read, plus a bunch of other equally delightful bits. If this were a comic book Allen would be all over it.


• On the Blindside (Sonya Taaffe): Woman who grew up with fairies and then went back to the real world confronts her childhood; just enough twist to make it work.


• Jane (Marc Laidlaw): Some interesting things going on here but it feels like I have to do too much work to make the events into a sensible backstory. I thought this might be a sequel to something, which might help make sense of it, but I guess not.


• Is There Life After Rehab? (Pat Cardigan): Snappy vampire story that starts out strong but feels like the author didn't know how to end it. Oh well.


• Two Hearts (Peter Beagle): I assume I'd have gotten more out of this if I'd read The Last Unicorn, but it stands ok on its own. Also, having a griffon as a scary monster is weird to me, I guess purely because it's not that scary a monster in D&D. I mean, a griffon is, what, at most CR 4, and that's only because it can fly.


• Super-Villains (Michael Canfield): You will be surprised to hear that super-heroes and super-villains need each other to keep themselves going. You're not surprised? Oh well.


• Empty Places (Richard Parks): I guess this is part of a series, since I see a few hits for the characters that appear here. This particular one is perfectly workmanlike as a story but has no twist (and hence no bite) whatsoever. Maybe it'd be better if I knew who the characters were already. (But then what about the relevation at the end ..?)


• Invisible (Steve Rasnic Tem): Guy in a corporate setting hates his life. One of those stories where the protagonist is so pathetic the reader grows to dislike rather than pity him.


• By the Light of Tomorrow's Sun (Holly Phillips): I don't really get the relevance of the title, nor do I really get the main character's motivations, but it was nonetheless interesting to watch. I don't think this would have worked in a longer form but here it was a-ok.


• The Gist Hunter (Matthew Hughes): This story is actually why I picked up the volume; some people had mentioned it as Dying Earth fanfic (or, rather, as a very-pre prequel). The plot and dialogue and characters are all very Vancian but the mix doesn't quite feel right -- I think maybe slightly too much has been crammed into too small a space, so it feels forced. I have the sequel novel to this coming up soon; perhaps it will work better there.

Carte Blanche (Carlo Lucarelli): This is pretty much the ideal setting for noir, even better than the original -- it's Italy, in the last days of Mussolini. The government is on the verge of collapse but there are still attempts to maintain law and order (alongside the secret police and the rebels and the oncoming military front) and so some poor bastard has to do it. This particular poor bastard is a cop, ex-secret police with all the spying and torturing that implies, but I still feel a little sorry for him when his boss says "find the culprit, no matter what it takes .. unless he's a German, of course." The murder itself is pretty trivial, but I guess that's the point: when society is crumbling even the simplest investigations are almost more than you can handle.

More soon.