Vampire detective with a difference

New Amsterdam, Elizabeth Bear

Someday, I believe, Elizabeth Bear is going to be universally recognised as one of the truly great science fiction and fantasy writers. I am profoundly impressed with each new book of hers that I read. She creates complex, interesting characters, places them in well-constructed settings, and tells engaging stories in finely crafted language that, in addition to entertaining, explore a host of challenging themes and leave the reader with something more to think about.

And range. Has she got range. Her body of work to date runs right across the spectrum from hard sf to high fantasy, and when she gets tired of the standard sub-genres in speculative fiction, well, she just mixes and matches until she comes up with something she likes. And she’s frighteningly prolific. Her first novel, Hammered, was published in 2005. Since then she’s released nine novels, one collection of linked short stories and novellas, a collection of stand alone short stories and a tenth novel co-written with Sarah Monette. At my last count (and I could be wrong), she has three more novels finished and in the pipeline, with at least two or three more in various stages of development.

And I’ve read most of the published books (though I haven’t gotten around to writing about all of them yet), and the ones I haven’t are sitting on my TBR shelf.

Today, I’m going to talk in glowing terms about her alternate history/steampunk/urban fantasy/vampire detective book, New Amsterdam. New Amsterdam is that collections of linked stories I mentioned above. is set in an alternate Earth at the beginning of the 20th century, a world in which the colonial project in the new world unfolded somewhat differently, thanks to the war magic of the indigenous peoples. There was no American revolution, and no unchecked drive across the vast new continent. England has only recently acquired the former Dutch colonies, and remains on the verge of war with France.

It’s also a world where vampires are quite real and function, to varying degrees, openly in society, and sorcery is recognised as a valued skill in a number of situations occupations, including that of forensic investigator. Which brings us to the absolutely unforgettable protagonists of the stories: Lady Abigail Irene Garrett, working in New Amsterdam as a Detective Crown Investigator and forensic sorceress, and Sebastian de Ulloa, ancient and powerful vampire, who travels to the world with his companion Jack Priest. Crime-solving is Abby Irene’s profession, and appears to be a hobby of Sebastian’s (which he approaches in a manner which seems to me somewhat reminiscent of the Great Detective himself, Sherlock Holmes).

Of course, events bring them together, and of course they solve mysteries and crimes together and become entangled in each other's lives and face grave dangers that neither can escape without the other (and of course, don't forget Jack, who is quite involved in all of this as well).

One of the wonderful things about these stories is how cleverly they both follow and subvert the standard tropes of the vampire detective/urban fantasy genre – which I love on its own, but here, where it has been carefully deconstructed and rebuilt in a way that is both comfortably familiar and delightfully different, is much stronger meat, and well worth the careful digestion to bring out its rich and mature flavour. This is a real, complex world, with characters that have complicated histories, needs and desires, multi-layered and conflicting intentions, motivations and loyalties, political considerations, secrets, deceptions, risks and consequences – all the stuff that Bear is so very good at, and which makes her work a true delight to read.

War, what is it good for?

Standard of Honor, Jack Whyte

This, the second volume of Whyte's Templar trilogy, is a most unusual novel.

Despite its 800-plus pages, there's really not much action on the part of the characters. OK, one of the main characters - Alexander Sinclair, Knight of the Temple and secretly a brother of the hidden Order of Sion, survives the battle of the Horns of Hattin at the very beginning, and the other main character, his young cousin André St. Clair, also a brother of the Order of Sion travels from his home in Poitou to the holy Land, becoming a Templar along the way, and ends up witnessing the battle of Arsuf in which Richard Lion-Heart defeated Saladin's army.

But almost all of those 800-plus pages is exposition, description and discussion. We learn a great deal about a great many things: the politics of England, Europe and the Middle East, how to train an army in the use of arbalests and crossbows, how to move a force of 100,000 men from Burgundy to Acre, the personal life of Richard Lion-Heart, and a general picture of the life of a European fighting man in the 12th century. Most of the characters, both major and minor, have a penchant for talking about the political, religious, and moral issues of their time, so we hear a variety of perspectives on such things - some of the most interesting from the viewpoint of Alec Sinclair who has spent much time living among the Arabs of Palestine and has come to see them as humans, rather than heretical demons, with a culture that in some ways is more advanced than that of Europe at the time.

Whyte is a sufficiently good writer, and he weaves these deep conversations so seamlessly into the narrative thread, making them a part of the evolution of young André St. Clair, that all of this talking doesn't stand out - it really isn't until the end that one realises that while not a lot has happened to the characters onscreen, as it were (certainly they are all working very hard, training, marching, sailing, fighting, waiting out sieges and so on during the whole time), one is left with a deep and rich portrait of the Third Crusade itself and the world in which it took place.

One is also treated to a series of very critical discussions of the negative impact of religion, the corruption of power and the horror of war, views which are quite modern in tone but which can be anachronistically voiced by his main characters because of their initiation into the traditions and philosophies of Whyte's mythical secret society, which has matured well beyond its Jewish origins, and because of Alec Sinclair's disillusionment with both Christian and Muslim "men of God" as a result of his time spent among all of the religious factions at play in Palestine of the time - Roman and Orthodox Christians, Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

It is difficult in these days to read a book that discusses the Crusader experience, the varieties of religious intolerance, and war in Palestine without thinking of recent events in the Middle East and Central Asia, and I personally found it quite relevant to read a book that, despite being on the surface a novel about a mythical society behind the Tamplars, provided a very clear and balanced overview of another time when powers identifying themselves as Christian and Muslim were at war and religion was the ground and standard in that war.

Near the end of the book, André St. Clair addresses the grave in which he has buried his cousin Alec Sinclair and his cousin's friend, Amir al-Farouche, both dead in the battle at Arsuf, just outside Jerusalem:

... And both of you have died in war, fighting against each other for possession of this sacred place, And for what? For honor? Whose honor? Certainly, not God's, or Allah's, or Jehovah's, for the very thought of that is blasphemy. God has no need of man, and honor is a human attribute. for whose honor, then, are these wars waged? And how can there be honor in slaughtering people for the possession of a sacred place?

I can answer that for both of you. There is no honor in this war. There is no honor among kings and princes, popes and patriarchs, caliphs and viziers or whatever else you wish to name as titles. All of those are men, and all of them are venal, greedy, gross and driven by base lusts for power. Ours is the task of fighting for their lusts, and like poor fools, we do it gladly, time and time again, answering the call to duty and lining up to die unnoticed by the very people who sent us out there.

The scholarship of utopian storytelling

The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, Laurence Davis & Peter Stillman (eds.)

I'll admit it, this wasn't an easy book to read, and it took me a long time to go through it, reading one section of an essay at a time and taking more than a few side-trips into the philosophies of the major thinkers of the anarchist movement to fill in some of the gaps. for the most part, I'm still digesting what I've read.

I will say that making my way through these essays has given me a far more profound appreciation of The Dispossessed in particular and LeGuin's way of examining political and philosophical points of view in her work. From now on, I think I will see more - which is saying something, because there's always been a lot to see in her work. I also think that I might want to go back and re-read some of my favourite LeGuin yet again, to see what new thoughts come forth.

More magic and unicorns and dragons, oh my

The Phoenix Unchained, Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory


The Phoenix Unchained is the first volume of The Enduring Flame trilogy, which takes place in the world of Lackey and Mallory's earlier Obsidian Trilogy (The Outstretched Shadow, To Light a Candle, When Darkness Falls), only it's 1,000 years later, and no one remembers that the forces of Dark were only defeated, not destroyed forever, and everyone (well, at least everyone human) has forgotten that the dark was in the end defeated by a combination of ritual or high magic and wild magic. Which is sort of where we were at the beginning of the first trilogy, except that then, no one in the human lands remembered the existence of wild magic, and now, it's high magic that's been forgotten.

Enter the obligatory young person with a destiny. Although in this case, it's actually two young persons with a destiny, Tiercel and Harrier, best friends who have grown up together and seem to have their lives perfectly planned out for them until Tiercel rediscovers high magic and naturally, they're off on a journey to find out What It All Means. Unicorns,elves and dragons ensue, of course.

Based on the first volume, I expect this trilogy to be just as amusing to read as the last one was.