Entry tags:

books, reviews

Chinatown Beat, Feersum Endjinn
Another couple.


Chinatown Beat (Henry Chang): This is a noir/action novel, which is a little unusual if you prod it. The essence of action stories is, well, action -- speed, explosions, racing against time, violence being used to create or solve problems. The essence of noir is inaction -- endless nights drinking whiskey in a run-down office, cautiously poking your nose into things you shouldn't, and a fundamental idea that interference tends to have no effect or make things worse and violence is used to perpetuate the social order rather than change it (hence the classic scene where the detective is beaten up by the thugs and told to mind his own business). Midsummer Night's Dream is action; Hamlet is noir.

It's also a first novel, and the plot's got first-novel blues. It's gotta introduce all the characters that are (I assume) going to be important in later books: the future love interest, the local contact, the old friend gone to the other side of the law, the troubled relationship with dad. Plus, like the title suggests, the shtick here is that this is a Chinese noir novel -- it's set in New York's Chinatown and the cop is Chinese, so the author also has to talk about racism, Triad activity, Chinese words tossed in to make it sound more authentic*, and what the protagonist feels about it all. In between all these bits the author has to squeeze the plot in -- and because this is noir and action, we have to see the plot events taking place (for the action) and then being pieced together afterwards by the cop (for the noir). 'Squeeze' is definitely the right word -- we don't even see the end of the plot, we just have to infer it from the last chapter.

This is slightly grumpier than I actually felt about the book. I got off to a bad start with it because I stupidly read the book jacket, which gives away plot points that don't show up until halfway through the book. It's a quick read and reasonably entertaining, but I think I can't actually recommend it until I see if the followup books are any good.

*This is totally one of those books with a lot of "Something in Chinese," Bob says. "The thing translated in English for no obvious reason," he added, "Because the reader doesn't actually speak Chinese."


Feersum Endjinn (Iain M. Banks): This is not a book I would recommend to people who are not science fiction fans. Rather, it is the sort of book that, six pages in, starts a chapter with

Hortis Gadfium III, the chief scientist to the pan-alignment clan Accounts/Privileges, sat on a steel girder and looked up at the almost-finished bulk of the new Great Hall oxygen plant number-two liquifier unit, and shook her head.

And, come to think of it, ten pages later it's into a chapter that is spelled entirely phonetically*, which will reoccur throughout the rest of the book. And five pages earlier it's giving a stream of consciousness description of a clone learning how to interact with the world from first principles. So, yeah, not for amateurs.

Which is not to say it's not good. On the contrary, the book is so full of good stuff that it makes the complicated multi-thread narrative totally worth it**. It's very much the sort of book where you have to piece together a lot of important things for yourself, though, and at the end of the book there are still some small loose threads left dangling. But the point of this kind of book is to present a bunch of awesome, and it delivers on this promise in spades, so I'm calling it a success.

*I found it much easier to read than the Scottish in The Bridge, though.
**Apparently whoever wrote the back-jacket copy didn't think so, though -- it's written as though only about a quarter of one of the thread exists and takes up the whole book.

P.S. You'd think it would be otherwise, but the problem with the title being a phonetic spelling is I can never remember how to spell it.


Next up: A Walk in the Woods, The Shape of Water, The Sword-edged Blonde