Review – Page 11 – markwebb.name

The Light Heart of Stone by Tor Roxburgh – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading Challenge. All my AWWC reviews can be found here.

I was first made aware of The Light Heart of Stone by Tor Roxburgh through this excellent interview that Sean the Bookonaut undertook with Roxburgh in episode 15 of the Galactic Chat podcast. If you’re an Australian fan of fantasy novels, I defy you to listen to that interview and not be interested in picking up a copy.

The interview also contains some interesting comments about a previously published author’s path to self publishing. Roxburgh has brought an impressive degree of professionalism to editing and the publication process for this novel – there is nothing amateur about it at all (down to the excellent cover which is worth a second look once you’ve read the novel, fantastic representation of the main participants in the narrative).

I’ll summarise the story using the blurb from the website: “11-year-old Fox lives in Kelp province where her father is the Indidjiny keeper of the land and sea. When the 84-year-old Oak Companion arrives to test the camp’s children for talent, Fox finds herself wrenched from her family, forcibly adopted into the famous Oak clan, and thrust into the slow culture of the city of Komey. Fox’s adoption should signal a life of bound motherhood, aimed at returning her talent to its rightful owners, but nothing is as it seems. The Companionaris’ ability to grow plants and breed animals is failing, a murderous ambition has been sparked, and there is a stirring of old magic in the air.”

The themes of this novel are very thought provoking, especially for Australian readers. This is the first time I can remember reading a fantasy novel that is clearly set in another world, but uses Australian tropes and themes to inform the world building. Here we have a “civilised” colonising force and an indigenous population that is more nomadic in nature and close to the land. You have a “technological” advantage (the ability to boost the agricultural capacity of the land), issues of land rights, stolen children and the threat of slavery.

This could have easily become a thinly disguised diatribe on the state of modern Australia’s race relations. Fortunately, through most of the novel Roxburgh has put the story first and created an engaging narrative where the parallels with the modern Australian context add depth to the novel without overwhelming it. I was impressed with Roxburgh’s attempts to portray the motivations of the various characters and factions sympathetically. I think this is what prevents the novel being too over the top – if there were simple answers to some problems they would have been solved years ago, and Roxburgh does an excellent job of expressing that complexity through her characters.

Towards the end of the novel, some of this complexity is lost and the “goodies and baddies” become more starkly drawn. I can see this was probably a narrative necessity in order to bring the story to a close, but it would have been good to keep some of the ambiguity and complexity all the way through the narrative.

This sense of looking at an issue from multiple points of view is picked up by Indijiny practice of telling four stories when examining an issue – the first story describing the story teller (because there is no such thing as an unbiased narrator), the second and third stories telling about the issue from two contrasting perspectives (the more contrasting the better) and the fourth story attempting to tie the issue together by drawing on a story from mythology or fable to capstone the process. This sense of gaining broader perspective was an excellent addition and sounds like a good way to examine all issues to me!

The characters are very three dimensional and developed well over the course of the novel. There is an excellent sense of place, the continent is as much a character as anyone else and the rich descriptions help orient the reader. Again, the description of the landscape resonated very strongly from an Australian context.

As an atheist, I quite liked the religion of the colonisers – the concept of a god who turned its back on people once they grew up and left them to fend for themselves. If you’re going to have a god, you may as well have one defined by its absence.

The novel is the first in a series, and while the story stands alone reasonably well there are threads left untied to connect to future books.

I’ve commented in several parts of this review on the resonance I found between this novel and the Australian context. I’d be very interested in hearing comments from any non-Australian readers to how their experience of the novel changed.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Light Heart of Stone and am looking forward to the next book from Roxburgh. Highly recommended.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

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The Eternal Tide (Star Trek: Voyager) – Kirsten Beyer – review

The Eternal Tide by Kirsten Beyer is the latest Star Trek Voyager novel. I don’t think I’m giving anything away to say that this novel deals with the return of Kathryn Janeway to the Star Trek universe (her picture is on the cover after all). Janeway was killed off quite some time ago, and it does feel like the last few novels have been building up to this return.

I’ve been mildly enjoying the Voyager relaunch series. As I mentioned in my review of Children of the Storm by effectively cutting Starfleet down to nine ships sent off into the Delta quadrant, Beyer has created some containment to a story universe that seemed to be expanding out of control.

Janeway is returned in really the only way possible, by the intervention of the Q Continuum. She was pretty definitively dead, so Beyer had to go even further than the device used to bring Spock back in the Star Trek movies. Given the constraints, it was understandable but I’ve been a little disappointed in how the books in the Star Trek universe have backtracked on getting rid of major characters (I’m thinking and Sisko and Janeway mainly here). It feels a bit like caving to fan pressure, rather than good story telling.

I’ve been hoping that the characters in the Voyager reboot get some decent character development. However, I’m not entirely convinced that they do. To a large extent it seems the purpose of the last few books has been essentially to restore everyone to their previous role, but bumping them all up a grade (everyone wins a prize).

(I’ve got to say, the “Tom and B’Ellana have the perfect child” subplot was really starting to grate by the end of this novel. Everyone thinks their child is perfect, but 99.99999999% of the time they are not. Again this feels like the author is a new parent still very much in awe of their own child, and it’s about as welcome as a new parent talking about their “amazing child” at a dinner party. I hope future books can move past it, the characterisation is very irritating)

Having said all that, there was some very interesting plot in this book. I was intrigued by the back story of Fleet Commander Afsarah Eden and I did like the treatment of the Q Continuum. Beyer is not afraid to kill off characters and has winnowed away a lot of the excess, leaving a manageable cast of main characters for future books. I thought the main story thread here (once you remove the stuff primarily designed to justify Janeway’s return) was good.

For fans of Voyager and Captain Janeway, this will be a must read. If you haven’t been reading along on the reboot, this isn’t the place to start.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

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Watching the Clock (Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations) – Christopher L. Bennett – review

Watching the Clock by Christopher L. Bennett represents a thread of the Star Trek universe, where a couple of once off characters from an episode of Deep Space Nine. The two characters (Lucsly and Dulmer) represent the somewhat bureaucratic Department of Temporal Investigations and become the core of a novel based on said department’s operations.

I don’t actually mind the conceit, I remember those two characters and the idea of exploring the bureaucratic side of the Star Trek universe appeals to my public servant side. I could well imagine the need to have operatives with a serious lack of imagination when attempting to preserve the timeline.

Despite my enthusiasm for the concept, Watching the Clock‘s primary purpose seems to be to provide an underlying theory of time travel that allows all of the crazy time travel episodes across all of the various incarnations of Star Trek to make sense. There are a lot of “in jokes” (this is not the Star Trek novel to start with if you are only casually acquainted with the series) and generally there is a sense of trying to hard – the novel bends over backwards to try to explain things. It feels a little bit like a group of physics nerds got together, had a few drinks and tried desperately to explain Star Trek time travel while drunk.

As a result of trying to explain a lot of different events plus introduce a lot of new characters, the book feels like a series of short stories only vaguely linked together.

Having said all that, the writing is reasonable and I actually quite liked the ending. I’m in two minds about whether to try the second book in the series – I vaguely hope that with the need to explain time travel out of the way, there might be scope for a good single novel length story.

If the glaring inconsistencies with the treatment of time travel in Star Trek has always bugged you, this might be the book that allows you to put some demons to rest. If you’ve been happy to just take the time travel episodes on faith without thinking about them too hard, the attempts to explain will probably annoy you. If you don’t really watch Star Trek, I’m extremely surprised you’re still reading this review.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

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May Contain Traces of Magic by Tom Holt – review

May Contain Traces of Magic by Tom Holt tells the story of Chris Popham, travelling salesman for JW Wells & Co, purveyors of slightly dodgy magical products. He has been warned to never engage in conversation with his SatNav system, powered as it is by the soul of a extra-dimensional denizen doing hard time for unspecified crimes.

He talks to his SatNav. This tells you most of what you need to know about Chris Popham.

When Chris comes across the decapitated remains of one of his customers, clearly the subject of a demon attack, things start spiralling out of control.

May Contain Traces of Magic is set in the same world as some of Holt’s earlier novels based around the magic firm of J. W. Wells & Co (e.g. The Portable Door). Telling the story from the point of view of someone on the very periphery of the operation (Chris Popham, as a salesman, has no magic powers himself, he just sells the products) gives a different view of the world which I found interesting. Having said that, the novel is entirely self contained – you don’t have to have read any of the other books in the series to enjoy this one.

I find most of Holt’s novels are very amusing – not many laugh out loud moments, but clever, witty writing that is expressed very clearly. May Contain Traces of Magic is no exception, with the protagonist’s bumbling attempts to work out what is going on well portrayed throughout the book.

For all that the book is funny, it is not a light read. The plot is quite complicated, and keeping track of exactly who is doing what to whom at any given time is difficult. This complexity grows throughout the novel, with revelations that make you have to rethink the plot so far. I don’t mind the complexity, but you do have to stay focused.

The characters are well realised and developed considering the comedic nature of the novel. The novel is told almost exclusively from the point of view of the protagonist, so we only see the other characters through his eyes but there was a degree of sophistication in how facets of the secondary characters were revealed.

A complex, interesting read with lots of humour. Highly recommended.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

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Children of the Storm by Kirsten Beyer – review

Children of the Storm by Kirsten Beyer is the latest in the series of Star Trek Voyager books that traces the adventures of the crew of the Voyager after they return to Earth.

Star Trek novels are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine – I really enjoyed the various TV series when they were on (although watching repeats on Foxtel sometimes reminds me to never revisit the things I remember loving!). Still, I’ve been particularly enjoying the continuation of the Voyager, Deep Space Nine (my favourite of the TV series) and Enterprise stories in book form.

Children of the Storm continues the story of a group of Starfleet vessels, lead by Voyager, that returns to the Delta quadrant using slipstream drive technology. I think this has been a very clever premise for this particular storyline. In some ways, the Star Trek universe has gotten too big and the Federation too powerful to have really interesting stories. The scale of the threat required to trouble the Federation as a whole are so grandiose that the scale of story telling required to match it had become almost impossible to do well.

The move to a nine ship fleet in hostile space means that the stories can be toned down as well, and that is frankly a relief. I enjoyed that aspect of this story.

The story itself was fairly standard Star Trek fare, with an inscrutable alien race, cultural misunderstandings, the threat of war and inter-species understanding triumphing in the end. The story was competently executed, although there was a significant amount of “set up” work this story had to achieve to help establish the fleet and the main characters. It did this well – in some places it was a little clunky, but only in a minor way.

One element grated a little – the constant reference to the miracle of young life in the form of a precocious child was overblown. It reminded me of the way new parents can go on at length about their wonderful child, when everyone else in the room is rolling their eyes (I was/am not immune to this syndrome myself, but in my case it’s different – my children really are that fantastic). I was not surprised to read in the author’s afterword that Beyer was a new parent. Hopefully that element of her authorial voice will get toned down a little in future books.

Apart from that a well executed novel establishing an interesting story arc for the Star Trek universe. Looking forward to reading more.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

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The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe – review

I first came across mention of The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe when it won the Gemmell Morningstar Award. I was a big fan of David Gemmell’s work in my youth and still enjoy them to this day, so the endorsement carries some weight. Add to this that Lowe is an antipodean author (New Zealand based) and I was very keen to read it.

The Heir of Night is the first of a trilogy. The premise is interesting – a blend of science fiction and fantasy. Hundreds of years previously a race of warriors (the Derai) arrived on the planet Haarth along with their intergalactic enemies the Swarm of Dark.

Fast forward to the present day and the Derai are dangerously weakened. A schism years before has separated the psychically powered priests from the warrior aristocracy. The main character, Malian, is the Heir of Night, one of the nine houses of the Derai. After an failed assassination attempt she discovers she has inherited powers, a discovery that means she is going to be exiled. The remainder of the novel tells the story of her journey to escape her enemies and start to explore her destiny, which involves being the saviour of the Derai and the whole world of Haarth.

This is not a stand alone story – the various strands of the story are not resolved and it has very much a “start of the journey” style to it. The trilogy continues with The Gathering of the Lost for those wanting to follow along, with the third book not yet released.

While not marketed as such, I got a very “young adult” vibe from this book. The protagonists are quite young (although presumably they will grow up over the course of the trilogy) and the story had a certain neatness to it that I usually associate with stories pitched at a younger audience. For example, people came into their powers very quickly and seemed to master them equally quickly, despite the fact that those powers had been neglected by the Derai society for 500 years. Powers and artefacts come along just in time to save the day. That kind of thing.

The world building was quite rich and the science fiction elements blended well with the fantasy. The magic/psychic powers system is well thought out and adds depth to the action sequences.

There was a refreshing gender parity that runs through the book, which is even more powerful because it is not explicitly commented on. Gender is simply not a factor in which roles a person can take in the society as it is portrayed.

I enjoyed the glimpses of the Haarth societies beyond the Derai, which (given the story arc) I assume will be more prevalent in the remainder of the trilogy. Some of the minor characters (such as the Heralds) I found the most intriguing, possibly because there was less backstory. There is always an issue with fantasy stories when introducing the world building elements – balancing orienting the reader with the danger of over-exposition. Generally The Heir of Night does a good job, with perhaps a few instances where the “excuse” to give background was a little forced.

Generally I enjoyed the novel, but didn’t gel with either of the main characters. It is perhaps a function of my age versus the age of the characters, but I didn’t identify with them which detracted slightly from my enjoyment of the story. However, there are a rich array of secondary characters which I did find interesting.

Recommended for younger readers or an excellent starting point for adults new to fantasy.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

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The Walking Dead – Seasons 1 and 2 – review

One of the newer channels on Foxtel started up a few months back and played the first two seasons of The Walking Dead – a post apocalyptic zombie horror story that K and I decided to watch. It follows the story of a group of survivors of a virus that swept around the world, re-animating dead people as flesh craving “walkers” – very much your traditional zombie.

The main character is Rick, a former small town police officer who was gunned down and put in a coma. He wakes up to find the hospital deserted and his town filled with walkers, which has to take the record for the most disorientating way to come out of a coma that I can remember seeing on TV. He eventually finds a group of survivors, including his wife and son, and the story focuses on their attempts to find somewhere safe to bunker down.

I don’t often get hooked into zombie horror – it can (sometimes) sustain my interest over the length of a 90 minute movie, but anything longer than that strains my interest to breaking point. The Walking Dead was an exception. There is a strong ensemble cast of characters, with excellent acting and great interactions. Main characters get killed off at regular intervals, leaving a “no one is safe” feel which I find appealing.

The show is based off a comic book series of the same name. I’ve never read the comic, so I can’t comment on how true to the original it is. I understand there is a fair bit of divergence at the detailed level, but that the broad story is similar.

The show spends as much time focusing on the breakdown of civilisation as it does on gut wrenching sequences as people attempt to escape from hordes of killer zombies. This kind of exploration of how people react when their comfortable world is ripped away from them is the aspect of dystopian fiction that appeals most to me.

Having said that, this isn’t just a thoughtful philosophical piece that explores a human reaction to crisis. There is gore. Lots of gore. If fact, if you’re the type of person that feels a bit queasy when you see a bit of blood, I strongly suggest you avoid this show. But for those horror fans that don’t mind a disembowelling or two The Walking Dead provides a good combination of physical and psychological horror.

Recommended.

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The Magicians by Lev Grossman – review

The Magicians by Lev Grossman tells the tale of Quentin, a genius level high school student who is wondering what to do with his life when he receives an invitation to sit an entrance exam to a very exclusive school. Given his secret obsession with a children’s fantasy book series (Fillory) and his general lack of direction, he is very pleased to find that the school in question is for people who can do magic.

This is a very engaging book, I found myself pulled through it and devoured it in a few days. The premise was strong and I enjoyed the style of the writing, the use of language and the grittier reality of what life might be like for people with magical powers in the modern world.

Fair warning – if you aren’t a fan of sex, drugs, swearing and generally bad behaviour, this probably isn’t the book for you. Imagine if you had magical powers, you couldn’t reveal those powers and there were no magical threats in the real world. Seems that most magicians in Grossman’s world, rather than trying to solve world poverty or anything, twist their talents towards a hard core partying lifestyle once out of school.

The fact that magic required painstaking training, intelligence, creativity and hard work to master was a relief. I’ve said before that sometimes the sense that characters go into the woods with a wise mentor, have a very quick training montage and are suddenly the absolute masters of their craft (all within a couple of weeks) can really throw me out of a story. The magic in The Magicians required tedious repetition and close study over the course of years – and was more engaging for all that.

It was a strong ensemble of characters, although I must admit by the end of the novel I was starting to wonder if the main character, Quentin, was ever going to a) be happy or 2) step up. While the novel was a lot more grown up, the main characters were still, for all intents, mopey teenagers (although by the end they were well into their twenties and one could be forgiven for saying “get over yourselves”). From that perspective, it will be interesting to see what Grossman does with the sequel.

The novel was very aware of the fantasy genre, with references to Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Narnia. For all that, I don’t think it would necessarily appeal to people who liked fantasy primarily aimed at a younger adult (e.g. Potter) – this is a much darker story with less likeable characters. I preferred it for that reason, but I can see how others might not.

I always struggle with “meta” concepts in these kinds of novels – I’m sure there was deep commentary on the nature of modern fandom, the cartoon style approach to violence in many fantasy novels, the reality of what power does to the human psyche etc. You might have to read another review to get more details on that side of the novel though – my powers of critical commentary don’t quite stretch so far as to have strong opinions there.

This book has been reviewed umpteen times and I doubt I’m going to add anything original to the discussion. So I’ll just end by saying highly recommended, and I’m looking forward to reading the sequel.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

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Aurealis #53 (August 2012) – review

Issue #53 is the August 2012 issue of the Aurealis magazine, a monthly magazine showcasing Australian speculative fiction and with an emphasis on Australian content and news. This edition was edited by Scott Vandervalk and Stephen Higgins.

Stephen Higgins wrote this month’s editorial, focusing on the demographics of speculative fiction readers, in particular electronic publications like Aurealis.

The Karma Tree by Benjamin Allmon is a slightly disturbing story about the dangers of making fun of teddy bears. The protagonist lives in a share house, and Allmon does a fantastic job making the characters come alive in a short story. The writing blended humour with disturbing images well.

Nightsider by Richard Kerslake tells the story of Shana Bron, an immigration officer on the daylight side of a world tidally locked with one hemisphere in perpetual sunlight and one always shrouded in darkness. Bron struggles with the demands of her life as she hangs onto the edge of the “haves” society, while dreaming of seeing the stars. An enjoyable story, more character driven but with enough of a plot to keep the reader interested. It was an interesting world portrayed – well worth the read.

This month’s edition contained an XTREME SCIENCE article, titled To Infinity – And Beyond! by Patricia L. O’Neill, which describes some of the history behind what went onto the Voyager spacecraft. A series of human foibles and unusual circumstances dictated which pictures, sounds and information were stored on the craft in case alien civilisations ever come across them. It was a very interesting read.

Robert N Stephenson draws parallels between the current debate in Australia on asylum seekers who arrive in our country by boat and some of the “alien invasion” style sci-fi from the 1950s in the regular Rob’s Rants and Raves column.

Well worth the read.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Aurealis #52 (July 2012) – review

Issue #52 is the July 2012 issue of the Aurealis magazine, a monthly magazine showcasing Australian speculative fiction and with an emphasis on Australian content and news. This edition was edited by Scott Vandervalk and Stephen Higgins.

Stephen Higgins wrote this month’s editorial, focusing on the process they use to choose stories for the magazine. It provides interesting insight, and well worth reading for any aspiring authors who might like to submit something to Aurealis in the future. Hang on a second, that’s me!

I loved both stories in this month’s edition, although they were radically different in tone.

Time Travel For Dummies by Michael Burrows leads out this month. This was an extremely funny story, built around a single joke but executed very well. I’ve been trying (and failing) to think of a way of describing the story that doesn’t give the gag away – lets just say that it is an excellent take on the time travel theme, very Australian in content, and does a great job of a slow reveal. Highly recommended.

You would not really use the word “funny” to describe Do You Want to Live Forever? by Robert N Stephenson. This much less light-hearted story focusing on the life of Carlyle, a demon hunter masquerading as a hunter of serial killers, until he becomes hunted himself. The story was well written but felt a little truncated, as if we were getting a small glimpse into a larger world that Stephenson had created. I enjoyed Stephenson’s Rains of la Strange in the excellent anthology Anywhere But Earth (reviewed here), but I haven’t read anything else by him so I’m not sure if this story is part of a wider series set in this world. If so, this story is an excellent appetite whetter!

As always Carissa’s Weblog provides a round up of some of the more interesting articles around on the web in the area of Australian speculative fiction, mostly in the form of audio interviews and video. There were also significant number of reviews of both books, TV series and some interesting comments on the viability on TV series produced for cable channels. Robert N Stephenson makes some forceful comments on the behavioural patterns of published authors in the regular Rob’s Rants and Raves column.

Overall another good read, reminding me why I subscribe to this excellent Australian magazine.

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