Book Review: The Great and Secret Show

The Great and Secret Show
By Clive Barker
HarperCollins, 1989
Buy it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble
Recommended by Marshall Lemon

I should let you know up-front that The Great and Secret Show is a tough nut to crack. It's imaginative but constrained, sprawling but unfocused, and epic in scope but surprisingly subdued in delivery. It might appeal to horror fans, even though it's not really scary, and it might appeal to fantasy fans, even though its magic is grotesque and grounded in the real world.

It's hard to sum up the plot briefly, but it goes something like this: While working in a dead letter office, unassuming paper-pusher Randolph Jaffe discovers that there is a small, well-hidden world of magic users scattered here and there across the United States. He wants this power for himself, and eventually becomes a creature of darkness called The Jaff. This sets off a chain of events that lasts over 20 years and involves ten or fifteen major characters, eventually culminating in a struggle to stop a world of darkness from engulfing our own.

The setting is the strongest part of the book. Although the story mostly takes place in a California suburb, as Jaffe discovers, there is more going on than meets the eye. Barker creates a system of magic that is more reminiscent of medieval heraldry than the wizards and demons of the traditional high fantasy canon. Throughout the course of the book, the characters encounter an atomic bomb in a Nevada desert time loop, a Mexican cemetery full of vengeful undead spirits, a lake that springs out of a mysterious sinkhole, and a world of bizarre creatures from beyond our own dimension.

One thing that Barker does better than anyone is creating absurd, disgusting creatures, and that talent is on full display here. The Jaff has the ability to create monsters out of people's worst fears, and some of the results are fittingly disconcerting. You'll see plenty of things with scales and legs before the end of the day, but the most vile creatures actually come from another villain, Kissoon. The Lix are snake-like demons that arise from a combination of bodily fluids, and are roughly as unsettling as they sound.

The creatures and places they inhabit are a delight, but the story and characters that give rise to them are unfortunately much more lacking. The story takes forever to get going, and changes protagonists with such regularity that it's easy to wonder if Barker was just making up characters as he went, getting bored with each one.

At first, Jaffe's rival, Fletcher, emerges as a likely contender for protagonist, but is quickly replaced by Fletcher's son, Howard. Howard turns out to be ineffective, however, as he slowly surrenders the story over to reporter Grillo, and Grillo hands it off to his friend, Tesla, who ends up doing most of the heavy lifting towards the end of the book. The characters actually don't interact with each other much, meaning that the final result feels much more like five or six separate novellas than a cohesive story.

Barker also does not have a very good grasp on heterosexual relationships, but insists on shoehorning them in whenever possible — once between Howard and supposed rival Jo-Beth, who fall in love instantly and never do anything proactive for each other, and once between Raul, an enchanted ape-like entity, and occasional hero Tesla. It's about as weird as it sounds, and not much comes of it.

You'll probably never read anything quite like The Great and Secret Show, although whether that's a good or bad thing depends on your own tastes. For what it's worth, I wasn't a big fan, but I'm glad I read it just the same — it's chock full of an equal number of good and bad ideas. If you want more traditional horror, I like Salem's Lot by Stephen King, but who doesn't?

Book Review: Catch-22

Catch-22
By Joseph Heller
Simon & Schuster, 2010
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Recommended by Ty Dobbertin

Catch-22 is one of those odd books, not unlike The Catcher in the Rye, that if you didn't read in high school, you likely never will. This is a shame, as while Catcher is kind of a self-important ode to nothing, Catch-22 is a wickedly funny novel. Unfortunately, it's also an incredibly long, bleak one. Which one of these traits you remember more probably depends on your tolerance for pitch-black humor.

The story takes place in Italy during World War II. Captain John Yossarian is a bombardier during the last days of the Allied campaign in Italy, but he seems to be the only soldier who can see through the incompetence of the military command. Yossarian is afraid of dying - scared to death of it, in fact - and will do whatever he can to get out of the war. However, a vicious rule called Catch-22 prevents him from leaving: Any pilot who refuses to fly combat missions is deemed sane, and sane people must fly.

The most remarkable thing about Catch-22 is its humor. The book embraces every kind of humor, from jokes the soldiers tell one another to over-the-top dialogue to situations that push absurdity to its limits. Vignettes about commanding officers who insist the soldiers clock time on a skeet shooting range (which really improves their ability to shoot skeet) or march in parades serve to highlight how ridiculous the military chain of command can get.

While the book's humor rarely falls flat, it will almost definitely cross each reader's personal line of good taste at one point or another. One chapter involves a soldier organizing a bombing run on his own troops - complete with casualties - because he stands to make a lot of money from it. Others involve soldiers beating up prostitutes, threatening to slit a friend's throat open, and slicing a man in half with a propeller. There is definitely humor in these situations, but the book lacks any real pathos. As such, the black humor can get grating or depressing without any kind of contrast.

Still, none of that should take away from the brilliant writing, hilarious situations, and razor-sharp dialogue. The social critique of war as pure stupidity is apt and still relevant today, while the ending is just uplifting enough to redeem some of the book's bleaker moments. I don't have any solid recommendations for satirical books about war, but there is a lot of the same gallows humor and absurd wartime situations in Going After Cacciato and If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O'Brien. For other examples of "political system taken to its extreme," 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell are, of course, the logical choices.

Book Review: The Forever War

The Forever War

By Joe Haldeman

Ridan Publishing, 2012

Buy it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble

Recommended by Brian Capaldo

When I started this project, I wanted the results to be anything but predictable. I wanted to embrace whole new genres and discover a few flaws in the speculative fiction niche in which I’ve grown comfortable. However, like Hyperion before it, The Forever War has confounded my goals in the most insidious way possible: It’s proven to be an absolutely unimpeachable classic of science-fiction canon.

The story centers on Sergeant William Mandella and Corporal Marygay Potter, two soldiers fighting in humanity’s first conflict with an alien opponent. The book begins in the 1990s (which, in retrospect, had very few alien encounters, but the book was written in the 70s), but due to relativistic physics, each foray into alien territory takes William and Marygay further and further from the Earth and way of life they’re familiar with. As technology changes, war rages on, and becomes the only way of life either one can tolerate. Think The Hurt Locker, but with spaceships.

Although the story only has two big action scenes (and a third small one in the middle), the characters and dialogue are more than engaging enough to pull the narrative across over a thousand years of conflict. Watching human society evolve and change into something unrecognizable is downright frightening at times, although the ending provides a satisfying conclusion that makes the entire story worthwhile.

The writing itself is also far beyond reproach. In addition to having a great ear for natural, engrossing dialogue, Haldeman is a master of providing clear, detailed descriptions for the bizarre alien worlds, futuristic technology, and strange customs that the human race comes across. Initially, Haldeman wrote this book as an antiwar allegory for the Vietnam era, but its message still rings true today: War is senseless and ultimately pointless, but if you breed a whole generation of people for it, they won’t know any other way of life.

Of course, the book is not perfect, but most of its criticisms are nitpicks at best. The first forty pages or so contain some good action scenes, but much of the exposition necessary to understand them doesn’t come until after the fact. The middle section of the book can drag, as an event happens about 2/3rds of the way through that makes it seem as though the rest of the plot will be bleak and pointless (thankfully, the ending disproves this notion). There is also some uncomfortable and dated commentary on homosexuality, but it’s not malicious, just a little jarring.

If there’s a better military sci-fi story out there than The Forever War, I am not aware of it. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein is arguably just as good, although if you want something closer tonally, go with The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. This is also a fictionalized account of an author’s experiences in Vietnam, except without the science-fiction veneer.

Book Review: Fool Moon

Fool Moon
by Jim Butcher
Roc, 2001
Buy it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble
Recommended by Mike Thompson and Mike Grace

Fool Moon is the worst kind of book to review. As much as I want to tear it to pieces on a few technical levels, I just can't because I had so much fun reading it. Then again, if you've ever read a Jim Butcher novel before, you pretty much know what you're in for.

If not, here's how Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series works: Harry Dresden is a wizard in modern day Chicago. In fact, he's the only wizard-for-hire in town. While Harry has great magical talent, his business sense is lackluster, so he's always taking odd jobs either for the local police force or the occasional wealthy private citizen. His adventures put him at loggerheads with dark wizards, demons, and the criminal underworld, while exposing him to an ongoing love triangle between a beautiful journalist and a scrappy police lieutenant.

As you can imagine, Harry's adventures are pulpy at best, trashy at worst, and  the kind of book you could very easily read in one sitting if you have a few hours to kill. 

For what it's worth, Jim Butcher is a fairly talented writer, and has a real knack for action scenes, strong characters, and natural dialogue. He's also highly educated and shows it off at regular intervals with references to Shakespeare, Germanic opera, and pop culture from Dracula to Star Trek. Both Butcher as unseen director and Harry as narrator have appealing voices and amiable personalities.

The plot, this time around, involves a series of grisly murders that Harry must investigate, aided by the Chicago police force and an adversarial FBI team. Due to the murders' proximity to the full moon and a number of canine imprints on the bodies, Harry suspects a werewolf as the culprit, and the investigation begins. As expected, there are good guys, bad guys, betrayals, plot twists, and plenty of sex and violence along the way, but it's nothing you couldn't figure out once all the major players have been introduced.

The biggest problem with Fool Moon - and let's not beat around the bush, it's a fairly sizable problem - is with Harry himself. Harry is a bit of a Mary-Sue. He's not an egregious offender, of course - he's not all-powerful, he loses plenty of fights, and he gets banged up pretty badly during his investigation. However, he often keeps the truth to himself, withholding vital information from friends - especially female ones - that, by all rights, might save their lives, or the lives of others. However, Harry feels justified in every deception and rule-bend. If this comes back to bite him in later books, feel free to disregard this whole paragraph, but Harry's dishonesty in the name of chivalry is not a great character trait when played as a positive quality.

Still, Fool Moon is an enjoyable read from start to finish, and keeps the momentum going for The Dresden Files series at large. Since urban fantasy is not my forte, all I can say here is that if you're interested in the genre, you could do much worse than Jim Butcher. Start with Storm Front, as it's the first entry in the series, and should give you a good idea what to expect. 

Book Review: Hyperion

Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
Doubleday, 1989
Buy it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble
Recommended by David Martinez

So, it's shameful confession time: I was supposed to read Hyperion back when I was a sophomore in high school. My uncle bought me a paperback copy (you know, way back in the caveman days when we used to read books printed on dead trees. Odd, I know) and insisted that it would be one of the best sci-fi books I ever read. I read the first two chapters, thought they were great, and then promptly put it down to read whatever the latest Star Wars book was.

Please forgive me. I was young and foolish and in love with a movie series that George Lucas had not yet finished ruining.

Anyway, nine years later, I've made it all the way through Hyperion without wanting to put it down once. The book can best be described as a mash-up between Dune and The Canterbury Tales, although it doesn't read very much like either one of them. Yes, the book focuses on a bunch of offworlders who find themselves on a planet caught in-between a population of zealous natives and a hostile invasion force. True, the seven travelers in question each tell very different stories in order to pass the time. However, in spite of its inspirations - which range from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Keats to Asimov - Hyperion is very much an original story, and the world of sci-fi literature is all the better for it.

While there is way too much going on in the story to sum it up neatly, I'll give it a go anyway: seven very different travelers find themselves on a pilgrimage to the world of Hyperion in order to make contact with the Shrike, an incredibly destructive alien presence that they have all come in contact with before in one way or another. They might be able to save the galaxy from a barbarian invasion - or they might just get eviscerated. Either way, they decide to share their stories as they make their way to the mysterious Time Tombs where the Shrike resides.

That's pretty much it. The stories themselves are the main focus, but by piecing together background details, you'll learn exactly what's been going on in the galaxy at large and what role the Shrike might play in the fate of galactic civilization. Each story has a different writing style, ranging from epistolary journal entries to military sci-fi to a film noir detective story. Each character, from the bitter scholar Sol Weintraub to the stoic soldier Fedmahn Kassad, is extremely flawed, but still likable.

The book, however, does have one serious problem, but it's hard to address without going into major spoilers. To keep things as vague as possible, I'll just say that the book has a very unsatisfying ending. There are some important plot points that happen towards the end, but the actual resolution of the book basically amounts to "buy the sequel." There's no real climax, and it ends right before it gets to what promises to be the best part of the story. Read at your own risk, and be sure to set aside another $8 or so for the next installment.

Recommending a "better" book here is tough, as Hyperion is actually one of the better-written, smarter sci-fi tales out there. If you want to know where about half the plot comes from, though, be sure to read Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Actually, read Foundation no matter what. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

Book Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
Vintage, 2010
Buy it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble
Recommended by Erin Donohue

My first exposure to magical realist Haruki Murakami was a short story called "The Dancing Dwarf." In a nutshell, a man who spends his day making elephants (not statues or replicas - actual, real elephants) enlists the help of a malevolent, dancing spirit to help him win a woman's heart. This all happens within the span of about twenty pages, and it's a wild ride from beginning to end. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, one of Murakami's most recent and best-known novels, is kind of the opposite.

Rest assured, there is some very strange stuff in this book, but you'd never know it from most of the plot developments. Toru Okada, an ordinary man living on the outskirts of Tokyo, sets out to find his missing cat and, in so doing, starts a chain reaction involving Toru's emotionally distant wife, his malicious brother-in-law, a traumatized WWII veteran, a pair of psychic sisters, a death-obsessed high school girl, and a mysterious woman who communicates exclusively through lewd telephone calls. There isn't much of a plot to speak of. It takes almost 300 pages for a real event to set the plot in motion, and another 250 before Toru takes some proactive steps to bring about the climax.

The novel's biggest issues all stem from its main character. While Toru Okada is a charming everyman, he is also one of the most lazy, unambitious, passive leading men this side of the Dude. He doesn't work, he accepts criticism without comment, and nothing seems to anger or excite him. This drags what could have been a concise story into one that's over 600 pages long, with very little actual action happening during that time. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle's pacing is glacial and branches off into nearly irrelevant digressions about side characters frequently.

However, taken as a whole, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle works, despite the fact that without a plot or a compelling main character, it really shouldn't. Murakami's writing (and Jay Rubin's excellent translation) makes Toru's constant stream of thoughts and inaction a joy rather than a slog, and the book's climax and ending make the interminable buildup very nearly worthwhile. The characters (even Toru, to a certain extent) are offbeat and memorable, and when the supernatural elements come into play towards the end, they elevate what could have been a trite suburban drama into a life-or-death adventure.

I don't have a solid recommendation for this one. If you can endure 600 pages of nothing much happening for the promise of good writing and an excellent conclusion, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is definitely a good read. Otherwise, you can find more concise magical realist tales in Murakami's own short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes. Be sure to check out some of Franz Kafka's work as well if you'd like to learn about one of Murakami's biggest influences.

Book Review: Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
by Leslie T. Chang
Spiegel & Grau, 2008
Buy it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble
Recommended by Heather McLellan

Once again, our book review takes us to an exotic, faraway land. This time, instead of le gai Paris, we'll be exploring industrial China. Leslie T. Chang, an intrepid American reporter, writes the best kind of nonfiction in Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China: namely, the kind that has no bias other than "what information will make the best story?" While Chang's book can be both fun and frustrating in equal measure, there is a ton of stuff to learn here, and almost all of it is worthwhile.

Factory Girls, at first blush, is most comparable to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Instead of early 20th-century Chicago, however, Chang's book focuses on modern-day Dongguan, China. Originally an out-of-the-way farmland, Dongguan has transformed into an industrial powerhouse over the last half-century. Powered by the insatiable lust for electronics and clothing in the West, as well as the cheap, inexhaustible supply of migrant workers from the Chinese countryside, Dongguan is now home to millions of young women who are making their own fortunes and dictating their own destinies. Part capitalist exhortation and part exposé, Chang documents these young women as they move from job to job, boyfriend to boyfriend, and city to farm and back again.

First and foremost, Chang's writing style is a nonfiction writer's dream come true, most closely resembling the works of V.S. Naipaul, but channeling her fair share of Sinclair and Orwell, too. Most of Dongguan's fast-paced tribulations come through the eyes of Chunming and Min, two factory girls whom Chang befriends early on to act as her eyes and ears in the factories, schools, ice cream shops, and governmental bureaucracies in the sprawling Chinese city.

Even as the two describe fairly abysmal working conditions - twelve-hour days with little overtime pay and only two days off each month - Factory Girls never devolves into a polemic. In fact, Chang takes time to point out how much these conditions have improved in the last twenty years, how much fun the girls are able to cram in after-hours, and how their newfound relative wealth gives them a considerable amount of social power, both in dealing with their families and potential suitors. Make no mistake - you probably wouldn't want to work in a Dongguan factory, but if you were a young Chinese woman whose only frame of reference was an idle, rural life, this would be the most exciting adventure imaginable.

The book falters, however, when Chang digresses into her own family history, which she intersperses into the narrative with increasing frequency. It's understandable that Chang, a born-and-bred American citizen who has little innate connection to China beyond her racial heritage, would want to learn more about her past. However, the links between Chang's family drama during the Communist revolution and the China's current industrialization are tenuous, at best, and the stories about Min and Chunming are frankly much more interesting. Unfortunately, when all is said and done, these sections take up a good 1/3 - 1/2 of the book.

In spite of a few boring patches, Factory Girls is well worth a read for anyone who's interested in Chinese culture, the power dynamics of women in China, or good reporting in general. At this point, I usually recommend a "better" book, but I'm not sure there really is one here. Both The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell deal with similar situations in the West in the early 20th century, and while both are better written, neither one explores Chang's subject matter. This is a book primarily meant to educate, and unless you are a leading expert on Chinese culture, you'll probably learn a lot.