My life in books

J. D. Popham, “Museum Piece”; Compelling Science Fiction, Winter 2017
http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/museum-piece.html

The creator of the robots is dead, and the only surviving humaniform robot is on the run, following his last instructions from his maker. Interesting but I found a serious disconnect between why the robot is being hunted, and what he is trying to do. It seemed there was some information left out along the way, and things like that bother me.


Ahmed Khan, “Crystals of the Ebony Tower”; Another Realm, January 2018
http://www.anotherealm.com/2018/ar010118.php

An interesting fable, marred in my opinion by too much specificity at the end. Without that, it would have been more widely applicable to the human quest for achieving one’s dreams, eschewing the easy way out. With it, it seems a touch too judgmental about which goals and dreams are worthy, and which are not.


Kai Ashante Wilson, “The Lamentations of Their Women”; tor.com, August 24, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/08/24/the-lamentation-of-their-women/

“How to be evil without doing bad? There’s a problem for you, huh?”

The title of Wilson’s novelette evokes the hero stories of Robert Howard, the creator of Conan the (white) barbarian, who rambles through a fantasy prehistoric world dealing rough justice with any number of enchanted weapons. In Wilson’s world, the world in our own, the world of Trump and the carceral state and extrajudicial murders of black men, and the heroes who find the enchanted weapons calling them to vengeance are two black New Yorkers, Tanisha and Anhel, who make a pact with darkness and set out on a murderous mission, to make those who oppress them pay. It’s violent, and angry, and it’s a warning.


Ellen Klages, “Caligo Lane”; originally published by Subterranean Press in 2014, reprinted by tor.com
https://www.tor.com/2017/05/12/reprints-caligo-lane-ellen-klages/

Franny Travers has a magical gift; she can make maps that turn into doorways, if she is careful and thorough and detailed enough. As long as she has two endpoints, she can make a bridge between them, a bridge big enough for a few people to pass from one point to another. One more important thing. Franny lives in San Francisco, but she is a Polish Jew, and this story is set during WWII.


Sunny Moraine, “eyes I dare not meet in dreams”; tor.com, June 14, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/06/14/eyes-i-dare-not-meet-in-dreams/

This is a story about the day when all the dead girls in refrigerators came back, still dead, but looking at the world with cold, clear eyes, and refused to go quietly back into the night. Chilling, and powerful, and somehow victorious.


Lucy Taylor, “Sweetlings”; tor.com, May 3, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/05/03/sweetlings/

In this post-ecopocalyptic world, the remnants of humanity struggle to survive, as evolution switches into high gear. Old species are reappearing, existing species modifying to take advantage of the inundated world. Taylor’s novelette hovers somewhere at the interface of science fiction and horror, telling a bleak take about the end of the world as we know it.


A. C. Wise, “Scenes from a Film (1942 - 1987); tor.com, March 31, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/03/21/excerpts-from-a-film-1942-1987/

Wise’s novelette is a disquieting examination of the media’s fetish for the deaths, preferably gruesome, of beautiful young women. Embedded in the standard Hollywood trope of the ingenue who comes to tinseltown to become a starlet, and that producer who discovers, creates and seduces her, is a litany of eroticisation of female fear, pain and death, using the death of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, as a touchstone of sorts linking all the murdered girls, all the serial killer narratives, all the films that make pain like theirs eternal.


Max Gladstone, “The Scholast in the Low Waters Kingdom”; tor.com, March 29, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/03/29/the-scholast-in-the-low-waters-kingdom/

Once there were doorways between the worlds and the knowledge and power to build planets, but the doorways failed and the knowledge lost. This is a story about a time when the doorways began to work again, and how some used them for conquest and plunder, and others used them to make peace where they found, and try to restore what was lost.

The world of Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence fantasy novels is a unique one, where black magic, religion and law are intertwined, and the practices of both faith and Craft rely on a structure of legal contracts that bind both human and divine energies. There are real gods (though not so many as there once were, since the God Wars) whose obligations to and receipt of devotion from followers are bound by contracts, contracts to grant power in return for worship. Craftsmen and Craftswomen are magician-lawyers who use their own human energies to work magic, and who are called on to execute, negotiate, record, oversee, and when necessary litigate contract issues involving both humans and gods. Using the language of law, with its complexity and precision, to describe and constrain transactions of magical and divine power reminded me of Diane Duane's Young Wizards books, where a kind of symbolic mathematics is used in much the same way.

Three Parts Dead is the first novel written in the universe of the Craft, but not the first chronologically. However, Gladstone informs his readers that the novels can all stand alone - and the fact that he has built such a following of fans while writing the books out of chronological order supports this - so I'm exploring the series in publication order.

Just as Gladstone's Craft universe is a unique blend of magic and law, Three Parts Dead is a fusion of fantasy and the kind of legal thriller one expects from a John Grisham. Criminal investigation, interrogation of witnesses, following up on clues, and courtroom strategies mingle with magicians, gargoyles, vampires and gods.

Kirkus Reviews summarised the basic premise of the novel more succinctly than I could: "The God Kos has died in the city Alt Coulumb, and the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht and Ao has been tasked by the Church to resurrect the god before panic and chaos causes the city to inevitably collapse upon itself. First-year associate Craftswoman Tara Abernathy and her senior-partner boss, Elayne Kevarian, travel to Alt Coulumb to bring the god back to life only to find out that Kos was, in fact, murdered. Tara leads the murder investigation, aided by Abelard, a chain-smoking priest, and his friend Cat, a junkie-cum-policewoman. As the trio navigates the ups and downs of Alt Coulumb, they are immersed in its history, politics and religious system." (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/max-gladstones-delightfully-misleading-three-parts/)

Gladstone's prose sings, carrying the reader deep into his world of gods and Craft. His characters are for the most part strongly realised and well-developed - though the villain of the piece came across as a bit too much of a mustache-twirling megalomanic. The plot is wonderfully twisted, with unexpected turns and sudden reversals and all the trappings of a superior suspense thriller. And the conclusion is quite satisfying. I'm looking forward to further exploration of the Craft Sequence.