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“Brief Candle,” by Jason K. Chapman (2009) E

February 22, 2010 in Book, Short stories by Emera | No comments

Date read: 11.15.09
Read from: Clarkesworld #38
Reviewer: Emera

Jason Chapman’s “Brief Candle” is a clever, winning tale of an unpreposessing sanitation robot onboard an imperiled ship. In a sort of AI-fueled homage to Flowers for Algernon (down to the name of the protagonist), the robot finds himself taking on much more responsibility than, literally, he could have ever imagined. It’s a marvellously entertaining story, with a quick, crisp narrative that revels in the meticulously imagined details that it unfolds.

Some of the humor was a bit too cute and obvious to work for me, and by the same token, the efficacy of the ending may depend on your willingness to have your heartstrings tugged; I felt a little resistant to the overt emotional appeal, but possibly I’m just being curmudgeonly. After all, I do tend to smile whenever I think of this story - it’s hard to be a grump about something so warm and fun.

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Jason K. Chapman

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“Her Mother’s Ghosts,” by Theodora Goss (2008) E

February 20, 2010 in Book, Short stories by Emera | 2 comments

Date read: 11.6.09
Read from: Clarkesworld #23
Reviewer: Emera

Theodora Goss’ “Her Mother’s Ghosts,” recommended to me an age ago by Maureen, is a brief, achingly beautiful meditation on family and heritage. The language is simple, rhythmical, and carefully chosen, and the strength and purity of the emotion that it evokes hit me particularly hard since… okay, for personal reasons that I don’t feel like talking about in detail (massive backpedaling there). Suffice it to say that this was one of those stories that I had to read twice for it to really click, but when it did - ow. hurty (but in a good and thoughtful-making way).

I love the feel of the descriptions, too - they feel like late-afternoon sunlight on a chilly day, or one of the story’s faded watercolors.

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Theodora Goss

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“Descending,” by Thomas M. Disch (1964) E

February 18, 2010 in Book, Short stories by Emera | No comments

Date read: 2.17.10
Read from: The defunct scifi.com
Reviewer: Emera

I originally found “Descending” through Ellen Datlow’s wonderful online selection of classic sci-fi short fiction, and was aggrieved to discover that with the passing of the original scifi.com, it’s now only available with the help of the Wayback Machine. But to get on with the real thing -

I’ve always been vaguely leery of escalators (where are those steps really going, when they sink into one another at the bottom? - I had a childhood fear that my feet would get sucked in with them if I didn’t step off quickly enough); Thomas M. Disch’s “Descending” has ensured that I’ll never trust one again. “Descent” begins with an unrepentant debtor’s delinquent spree in a department store, and ends in a state of perfect horror. It’s pleasingly precise and surprisingly rich in its details both of setting and character, packing a huge amount of atmosphere and subtlety into just about 4000 words, and the humor is wicked and ominous. Great stuff - I’ll have to look up more of Disch’s work.

John Schoffstall provides a wonderful reading and historical contextualization of the story here - also brief and rich - and Matthew Cheney at The Mumpsimus follows up with a quick consideration of how the story works as a piece of short fiction here.

On a side note, I’ve been running into increasing trouble picking tags for posts, given how frequently the line is all but invisible between, say, dark fantasy and horror, or science fiction and fantasy. (Let’s not even get into the argument that all fiction is fantasy, because there’s nothing there to even argue about, at the most basic [or pedantic, depending on how you want to look at it] level.) Well, I’ll just keep going with the policy of “whatever seems the most helpful.” I just feel horribly reductionist labeling something as nuanced as “Descending” “horror.” Do I need to start a category for “literary horror”? “Existential horror”? “Definitely not splatterpunk”? “Stuff that could be read without derogatory comment by people who don’t make a regular habit of visiting the genre hinterlands in Barnes and Nobles“?

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Thomas M. Disch

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Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier (2009) K

February 16, 2010 in Book, Novels by kakaner | 1 comment

Date Read: 1.29.10
Book From: Personal Collection
Reviewer: Kakaner

Summary

When Elizabeth Philpot and her sisters move to Lyme Regis, resigned to a life of spinstershood tucked away in a modest English seaside village, she finds herself befriending a queer fossil hunter, Mary Anning. Through Elizabeth’s education and readings, and Mary’s instinctive knowledge of the shore, they grow together in their mutual love for paleantology and fossil hunting. But the lives of the Philpots, Annings, and the very town are turned upsidedown when Mary discovers a prehistoric extinct fossil, causing an uproar in the scientific community and the entrance of many distinguished gentlemen in the field. Behind the scenes, Elizabeth and Mary explore a friendship that is strained by their respective failures to find a suitor, and interwoven with the fervor and drama of scientific discovery in a male dominated intellectual society is the sorrow and resignation that comes with spinsterhood.

Review

For me, Tracy Chevalier has never quite accomplished the same breathtaking, luminous achievement that was The Girl with a Pearl Earring  with her other books, but Remarkable Creatures is a complete turnaround. I ran away to BNN one day, picked it up for two hours, and simply could not put it down so I paid the $26.95 + tax to have the privilege of finishing it that very night in my bed. Overall, Remarkable Creatures is the historical novel I’ve been craving for a long while, whisking me off to 19th-century seaside England and embroiling me in the scandal, loneliness, and scientific discovery of the time.

Remarkable Creatures made me fear for my own life, made me examine my aspirations and accomplishments, and specifically the incredible brevity of a lifespan. Elizabeth and Mary have such purpose and drive, and are both gripped by an urgency to uncover more and more truths, working furiously to overcome social and cultural barriers. I, on the other hand, sit in my cubicle writing mundane scripts and am safe from the discrimination and prejudice of a century ago. And once Elizabeth and Mary reached a certain age in their lives, the despair seeped in, and both resigned themselves to many stagnant, loveless remaining years.

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Locke and Key Volume 1, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (2009) E

February 12, 2010 in Book, Graphic novels & comics by Emera | No comments

Date read: 1.26.10
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez - Locke and Key Volume 1

(Locke and Key Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft collects Locke and Key #1-6.)

After their father is murdered by a disturbed former student, the three Locke children travel with their mother to start a new life in an unlikely haven: the Keyhouse, an ancient mansion on an island named Lovecraft, off the Massachusetts coast. Keyhouse, with its sprawling, dilapidated grounds and many doors, is where their father grew up, and where he insisted - with unaccountable prescience - that his family stay should anything ever happen to him.

Here, oldest son Tyler immerses himself in guilt over his tumultuous relationship with his father and his possible culpability in his death, while middle sister Kinsey struggles with her overwhelming fears and loss of sense of self in the wake of the violent attack. Meanwhile, 6-year-old Bode explores the house unattended, and soon discovers something of the curious properties of Keyhouse’s doors, and the keys that can be used to unlock them. Unfortunately, Bode’s explorations bring him within the reach of an unsavory force dwelling on the mansion’s grounds, with a particular interest in keys and what they can achieve.

First of all, books with ribbon bookmarks and nicely designed endpapers = win:

Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez - Locke and Key Volume 1

(might be a bit hard to see, but the papers have a pattern of black keys.)

For those who might not already know, Joe Hill is Stephen King’s middle son, but has eminently succeeded in making a name for himself outside of his father’s reputation. I’ve been meaning to read his first novel (Heart-Shaped Box) and short story collection (20th Century Ghosts) for a languishing Forever, but Locke and Key Volume 1 ended up being my first foray into his work, after I grabbed it off of Kakaner’s shelf last summer. I went in with high expectations, and came out jonesing for moooore.

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Sebastian O, by Grant Morrison, art by Steve Yeowell (1993) E

February 3, 2010 in Book, Graphic novels & comics by Emera | 2 comments

Date read: 6.11.08
Book from: Personal collection
Reviewer: Emera

Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell - Sebastian O

“One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery…”

After over four years of squalid captivity, the infamous dandy Sebastian O escapes from Bedlam Asylum, determined to seek revenge for the treacherous destruction of his Club de Paradis Artificiel, an association of “free-thinkers.” Battling officers of the Queen and crazed assassins alike, Sebastian makes his way through several wardrobe changes and the sewers and railways of an alternate Victorian England, where a strange conspiracy is beginning to make itself known.

Sebastian O is one of the earliest contemporary steampunk creations, as well as being an obvious tribute to Oscar Wilde. Not surprisingly, it’s also one of my absolute favorite comic series - I love sneaking re-reads of it whenever I’m feeling down and in need of some amoral, witticism-wielding libertines in my life. Unfortunately, it’s quite short - only 3 issues - and though Grant Morrison does excel at packing a lot of content and tight plotting into his mini-series, you’re left wanting much, much more of the characters and settings, all of which are colorful and vividly imagined. On top of that, it’s also out of print, though used copies run cheap.

Artwise, I’m lukewarm on Tatjana Wood’s pastel palette, but it does work with Yeowell’s delicately lined art - one gets, appropriately, the sense of a brittle confection of spun-sugar. Supposedly Yeowell researched Aubrey Beardsley’s work for inspiration (thank you, unsupported claims on Wikipedia), but frankly, I don’t really see it. I do like how he renders facial expressions, though, particularly Sebastian’s perpetual air of weary self-possession and amusement just a little too slight to be called mockery.

All told, Sebastian O is a perfectly paced, literarily aware romp through decadence and dandisme, full of gadgets, duels, one-liners, and speculative-fiction braincandy. I would love to see a full-length return to Sebastian’s London, but unfortunately, I doubt it’ll happen.

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Grant Morrison

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The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau (2003) E

January 30, 2010 in Book, Novels by Emera | 4 comments

Date read: 1.26.10
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

Jeanne DuPrau - The City of Ember

“The city of Ember was made for us long ago by the Builders. It is the only light in the dark world. Beyond Ember, the darkness goes on forever in all directions.”

At the age of twelve, every child in Ember is assigned a job. Curious, bright-spirited Lina Mayfleet longs to be a messenger, but is instead assigned to dreary, dirty work in the underground Pipeworks. Doon Harrow, her classmate, is convinced that the sporadic blackouts of the great lamps of Ember - the only lights in a world of immeasurable darkness - forebode worse troubles for the city. He longs to investigate the enormous generator in the Pipeworks that provides the city with all of its power, so when he receives the job of messenger, he and Lina eagerly swap their assignments. As the blackouts increase in frequency and fear spreads among Ember’s citizens, Lina soon comes to share Doon’s suspicions that Ember is a dying city. Together the two embark on a search to uncover Ember’s origins, and to find a way to lead their people to the bright city that Lina is sure exists somewhere in the Unknown Regions beyond Ember.

I didn’t enjoy The City of Ember nearly as much as I thought I would, for all that it’s a rather endearing book. The characters and setting are warmly evoked, with detailed and frequently beautiful descriptions, and of course the concept is fantastic to begin with - Ember is one of those fictional realms you wish you could visit, and more often than not end up carrying around with you in your head after reading. (I imagined it looking like a less anarchic version of the city in the film La Cité des Enfants Perdus/The City of Lost Children, and would pay a large amount of imaginary money to run along its streets and peer into its shops.)

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The Woman in the Wall, by Patrice Kindl (1998) E

January 26, 2010 in Book, Novels by Emera | 2 comments

Date read: 3.22.06
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

book-kindl-woman

Rendered nearly invisible by her painful shyness, Anna is the middle girl of three sisters living with their mother in a rambling Victorian home. At seven years old, terrified by the impending threat of school, she retreats into passageways and secret rooms of her own construction, and lives within the walls of her home for the next seven and a half years. Anna is content to hide away as a sort of household ghost, nearly forgotten by even her family, until her own growth as a woman renders her “invisibility” no longer possible. A stray love note pushed through the walls of her refuge appeals to her developing emotions, and the time approaches for Anna to once more venture into the outside world.

I randomly spotted The Woman in the Wall on Kakaner’s bookshelf at some point around when we first began exchanging reading material on a regular basis, and the premise deeply appealed to me since I’m a. sorta shy and b. obsessed with secret nooks and passageways, to the point that a home-within-a-home sounds right up my alley. Even outside of my particular quirks, the concept is an emotionally powerful and imaginatively appealing one.

Unfortunately, Kindl’s writing isn’t up to the task. Although the book aims for a wistful, playful mix of Gothic fairy tale and magical realism, it increasingly dissolves into a weepy, unconvincing pastiche, with the narration lurching between “artsy,” “quirky” whimsy and banal adolescent histrionics. Too much pretension (or, more charitably, ambition), not enough substance. Though Anna’s story could have been a moving modern fairy tale about escapism and self-isolation, The Woman in the Wall more often seems clumsy, superficial, and implausible.

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Patrice Kindl

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“A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica,” by Catherynne M. Valente (2008) E

January 25, 2010 in Book, Short stories by Emera | 4 comments

Date read: 8?.09
Read from: Clarkesworld #20
Reviewer: Emera

I had previously mentioned “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” as being one of my favorite short stories read in 2009, yet had never gotten around to posting a review.

I don’t want to spoil a single bit of it, so I’ll just say that it’s like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell except with Antarctican cartography (yes, duh - seriously, I refuse to reveal any of it, please just go read it if you’ve got the chance), and that it’s funny, delightfully imagined, and ravishingly beautiful. I rather wish it had won the 2009 World Fantasy Award that it was nominated for, but clearly that’s not up to me. So instead I’ll just flail about it here.

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Catherynne M. Valente
“Urchins, While Swimming,” by Catherynne M. Valente (2006) [E]

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“Lover and long-legged girl”

January 23, 2010 in Book, Poetry by Emera | No comments

Maxine Kumin reads “Looking Back in My Eighty-first Year” (via Poems Out Loud)

I got to hear Maxine Kumin read this past autumn, and enjoyed the clarity and directness of her language - qualities particularly appreciated during a reading, I’m not gonna lie.

I’ve been zigzagging through her Selected Poems, 1960-1990 since then, and have enjoyed just about every one of her gardening poems and horse poems in particular, though her intensely meditative voice makes her personal poems generally excellent. Still underwhelmed on the political poems front.

To get back to the link at hand, “Looking Back in My Eighty-first Year” moves me to the point of being inarticulate about it, so I’m just posting the link and leaving it at that. Hope some of you will enjoy.

- E

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