Book Review -- THE THIN MAN by Dashiell Hammett

A thick web of lies and deceit. Bullet-riddled corpses. Mobsters knocking on one's door, packing heat. Police suspicion. A fortune in cash and bonds. Dope fiends and morphine addiction. Hysterical women and cunning femme-fatales.

Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man delivers, but not with the intense excitement and high-stakes of some of his other work, like The Maltese Falcon. (This, however, should come as no surprise, once the reader realizes that it was first published in 1934 as a serial in women's magazine Redbook--yes, that Redbook.) Although many of the female characters are conniving, treacherous, and often downright stupid and hysterical, Hammett provides a female character that is clever, trustworthy, and supportive of the main character--Nora Charles. This is a sharp divorce from the typical misogyny that runs through much of hardboiled detective tales. Indeed, the film version of The Thin Man is distinctively not very much film noir, and is actually quite lighthearted.

Greek American Nick Charles (an Ellis Island immigration officer changed the name from Charalambides), his wife Nora, and their schnauzer Asta, are in New York celebrating Christmas and New Years away from their company in San Francisco. Nick had once been a private detective before he joined Nora and went into business. Nora's keenly interested in Nick's past as a detective, and when one of his former clients turns up missing while the secretary is dead with four bullets in her, she gets her chance to experience a bit of the romance and adventure Nick used to inhabit. The couple was famously portrayed in 1934's film version of the novel by William Powell and Myrna Loy (notice below the dog is not a schnauzer), and in five subsequent films and a TV series that ultimately had nothing to do with Dashiell Hammett's books except the title.


The women actually make this book, and it is not surprising since the novel was written for (and serialized in) a women's magazine. Dorothy Wynant is a young airhead prone to hysteria and gratuitous overreaction. Her mother Mimi (ex-wife to the missing client) is vengeful, conniving, manipulative, and very much used to getting her way. Together, they do not provide a very positive portrait of women. However, Nora Charles, Nick's wife, is actually very much different from they, and are likely the primary character the female audience is supposed to identify with (despite the fact that the novel is written in first person from Nick's perspective).

Nora is problematic in that she's not an incredibly deep or incredible character. She's there, she's very prominent, and she has a very strong personality, but her weakness is that despite her strength, she's ill-defined. She's actually quite generic. She's smart--she helps Nick a few times by observing things that completely escaped his notice, teases him for being a lousy detective on occasion, and comes up with a list of suspects an motives. But her smarts aren't sharp. Of course, she lacks the experience that Nick has, and willingly takes a back-seat when he is doing his detective work. But in the end, she's just a glorified secretary. She doesn't play a pivotal role in Nick's solving of the crime. She's simply a pillar that holds him up. Nora complements him quite well, and they work very well together as a team. However, she doesn't really bring any special skills or abilities with her that Nick lacks save those traits a woman naturally has.

The book, however, is part of its time-period. I can honestly forgive its treatment of Nora. It isn't really chauvinistic, since Nora is definitely portrayed as a person of strength, resourcefulness, intelligence, and capability. One gets the impression that her and Nick are very much equal partners in both their business and their marriage. But the centerpiece of the book is not the business or the marriage--it is the mystery, and that's where Nick dominates the narrative and Nora recedes. She's still there, but she's a pace or two behind Nick. This isn't surprising. A powerful and dominant female detective would have been just as implausible to a 1930s housewife as it would have been to her husband.

The mystery itself is pretty convoluted. Hammett keeps the reader guessing through the immense web of deception that all of the women (except Nora) weave throughout the novel--including the deceptions of the deceased secretary (it seems that every female in the novel is a born liar).

"The chief thing," I advised them, "is not to let her tire you out. When you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to take its place and, when you catch her in that one, she admits it and gives you still another, and so on. Most people--even women--get discouraged after you've caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on either the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you've got to be carefull or you'll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you're tired of disbelieving her."

Nick's character handles it with the adeptness, cynicism, and sarcasm of any early 20th-century gumshoe. His dialogue is dry and witty, and although he was played by William Powell in the 1934 film (and subsequent movie series), I couldn't help but imagine Nick as Humphrey Bogart.

The prose is nothing to write home about. Hammett writes in this clear, matter-of-fact style, but sometimes he lets some dry wit slip from his pen.

Morelli hit the fat man in his fat belly, as hard as he could without getting up. Studsy, suddenly on his feet, leaned over Morelli and smashed a big fist into the fat man's face. I noticed, foolishly, that he still led with his right. Hunchbacked Pete came up behind the fat man and banged his empty tray down with full force on the fat man's head. The fat man fell back, upsetting three people and a table. Both bar-tenders were with us by then. One of them hit the fat man with a blackjack as he tried to get up, knocking him forward on his hands and knees, the other put a hand down inside the fat man's collar in back, twisting the collar to choke him. With Morelli's help they got the fat man to his feet and hustled him out.

In case you didn't notice, the fat man is fat. That's an example of how Hammett's arid humor emerges through deadpan prose. You have to be paying attention to catch it, but when you do, it's hard not to cock a smirk in amusement.

The Thin Man was Hammett's final novel. I've only read 1930's The Maltese Falcon and found it to be far darker, cynical, and despairing of human nature than The Thin Man. The latter novel is much more uplifting and the tone is overall hopeful. Nick and Nora Charles are never really in any serious danger of being accused, arrested, or separated. The dramatic tension increases only slightly when the police briefly suspect Nick. There's not much truly at stake throughout the novel for Nick and Nora, with the exception of their vacation plans. As a result, the tension throughout the novel is really sustained through simple curiosity and Nick's natural desire to clean up a mess (which occasionally wars with his desire to simply go back to San Francisco and not be bothered).

With so little at stake, its not surprising that, although a delightful little mystery, I find it has less in common with Hammett's earlier The Maltese Falcon or Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and more in common with one of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple stories. It's not a bad novel, but it certainly doesn't pack the nihilistic punch that a hardboiled noir mystery would. And here I reveal my bias--far and away, I prefer the sort of fiction that punches me in the gut. I enjoyed The Thin Man, but there was never any point in the book where I sat up and felt like Hammett was really nailing something about human nature or the human condition like he did with the end of The Maltese Falcon, where Spade tells O'Shaughnessy that he can't trust her and sends her off to prison. I guess my bias is toward the more painful and negative aspects of the human condition. I don't recall ever reading great literature and noticing a recurring theme of happiness and good times.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Style B
Substance B-
Overall B-

Book Review -- BLOOD MERIDIAN, OR THE EVENING REDNESS IN THE WEST by Cormac McCarthy

I've been wanting to review this novel for months, but haven't been able to get quite around to it. However, this is a book that screams to be read, and is perhaps one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

There are a number of other reviews of the novel, one by Goodreads, another by The New Canon, a further one by Bibliolotry, and Harold Bloom analyzed the depth of the work in his How to Read and Why. There is almost too much for me to review here, but I'm going to give it my best try.

Also, I'd suggest one look up Blood Meridian's wikipedia entry, although I'd skip the "Plot Summary" segment as it's full of spoilers. And if one's already read both, there's a fascinating article comparing Blood Meridian and another McCarthy novel, The Road at LibraryThing.

People love to hate this book. Why? It is difficult. Possibly the most difficult book you might ever read, barring Tolstoy or The Bible. Its returns are far from obvious. It has been described as an orgy of violence on an epic scale. The book appears to revel in nihilism on the frontier between the United States and Mexico in the mid-19th century. The language is thorough, thick, and difficult to decipher.

But my God, is it beautiful. I only wish I could write in such a profound manner. I find myself desiring it more and more to revisit specific passages just for the dense eloquence of the prose. McCarthy can describe a scene in such a manner that will startle the astute reader.

What is true of one man, said the judge, is true of many. The people who once lived here are called the Anasazi. The old ones. They quit these parts, routed by drought or disease or by wandering bands of marauders, quit these parts ages since and of them there is no memory. They are rumors and ghosts in this land and they are much revered. The tools, the art, the building- these things stand in judgment on the latter races. Yet there is nothing for them to grapple with. The old ones are gone like phantoms and the savages wander these canyons to the sound of ancient laughter. In their crude huts they crouch in darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of the rock. All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage. So. Here are the dead fathers. Their spirit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity. For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us.

This is a fantastic example of how McCarthy can wield the English language like a featherweight scalpel and generate an atmosphere of mysticism and darkness, of times long forgotten and lost. My own copy is dogeared at several points where the prose was so evocative, lovely, and profound that I found myself skipping back to those parts simply to read them again. One particular paragraph, perhaps 3/4 of the way toward the end, the characters contemplate the moon, and describe various theories concerning celestial phenomena. McCarthy does not simply report their words, but summarizes it in an almost mythical language that left my jaw dangling open in amazement.

By and by the judge rose and moved away on some obscure mission and after a while someone asked the expriest if it were true that at one time there had been two moons in the sky and the expriest eyed the false moon above them and said that it may well have been so. But certainly the wise high God in his dismay at the proliferation of lunacy on this earth must have wetted a thumb and leaned down out of the abyss and pinched it hissing into extinction. And could he find some alter means by which the birds could mend their paths in the darkness he might have done with this one too.

An earlier passage involved the character known as Judge Holden vindicating the reputation of a specific "black Jackson," a negroid character, by invoking everything from the Bible to Darwin and even giving hints at postmodern and racial theories to come. McCarthy renders this passage in an incredibly stirring manner, perhaps channeling the spirit of the Judge himself, his charm, eloquence, and genius, through his pen. His command of the English language is beyond description.

That dark vexed face. [The judge] studied it and he drew the sergeant forward the better for him to observe and then he began a laborious introduction in spanish. He sketched for the sergeant a problematic career of the man [the negro, Jackson] before them, his hands drafting with a marvelous dexterity the shapes of what varied paths conspired here in the ultimate authority of the extant--as he told them--like strings drawn together through the eye of a ring. He adduced for their consideration references to the children of Ham, the lost tribes of Israelites, certain passages from the Greek poets, anthropological speculations as to the propogation of the races in their dispersion and isolation through the agency of geological cataclysm and an assessment of racial traits with respect to climatic and geological influences. The sergeant listened to this and more with great attention and when the judge was done he stepped forward and held out his hand.

Jackson ignored him. He looked the judge.

What did you tell him, Holden?

The story follows the career of the Kid, a nameless protagonist who is a cynical stereotype of a Western antihero in the vein of Clint Eastwood's nameless protagonist in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But instead of being a weakness, it is a strength. The Kid is an empty, vacuous person because he is meant to embody the reader. He is a both spectator and participant in the rampant violence, rapine, brutality, and slaughter that his gang of lawless scalp-hunters engage in.

We don't truly read the book to follow the actions and behavior of the Kid. We find ourselves reading it for one person and one person only: JUDGE HOLDEN. The Kid exists for us to live through vicariously, a mute and helpless witness to the profundity that is the Judge. This is somewhat supported by the use of the second-person at the opening of the book, describing The Kid's origins:

Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.

The Judge might be human, but then again he might be something more. The man is a merciless killer, enormous, pale, hairless, a mutant perhaps. And brilliant. Whether or not he is an official judge is not important--the fact that, functionally, he passes judgment and sentence upon everything he comes across is far more significant. In his own words, things in this world exist with his consent. Those that do not, he destroys pitilessly. Life, to him, is cheap. But he is a brilliant man, steeped in all manner of lore, whether scientific, mathematical, historical, theological, or philosophical. But his knowledge makes him an implacable enemy. He is inevitable as the tide--when he has chosen to kill, nothing can stop him. And it might be possible that he is incapable of being killed.

The relationship between the Kid and the Judge is a fascinating one. The Judge is very much aware of the Kid, and as time passes and the Kid gradually comes to reject the brutality of his existence, the Judge and he become antagonists. The Judge exists to both uplift and subjugate those who surround him. He is not the leader of Glanton's gang, and indeed, is more of a vizier or a chaplain. His knowledge and wisdom paradoxically seeks to enlighten his fellow men, while simultaneously his wickedness and cruelty exists only to utilize them as he best sees fit. Though Glanton leads, he serves the Judge's purposes. The Judge embodies the horrific reality of the modern age--he is evidence that knowledge and wisdom do not demand that humanity become merciful and just. The Judge exists in a world where morals and ethics are man-made creations, and he is free to accept or reject them at will. Whether or not other humans consciously exist is not of his concern. From his perspective, he is the center of the universe, just as all of us perceive ourselves as the cosmic navel. The Judge differs from us by embracing that perception consciously, all the while aware that he is truly not the universe's center but caring little, because reality is what he makes it. Nietzschean philosophy and Existentialism coalesce within a character as viciously manipulative as Shakespeare's Iago (from Othello), as aloof and mocking as Edward (from King Lear), as brilliantly perceptive and reflective as Hamlet, and as strangely sympathetic as Milton's Satan (from Paradise Lost). Through Judge Holden, McCarthy has done the impossible--he has created a character that is as dynamic, moving, and indeed terrifying as Shakespeare's greatest.

The violence in the book has been labeled both "gratuitous" and "meaningless." I'd have to disagree. Yes, the book is full of massacre, slaughter, and murder. But it is certainly not meaningless. It is certainly not a plot vehicle, as violence usually becomes in many novels. Violence serves no purpose other than to be violence. But that's where its meaning is revealed. The violence is not symbolic of anything (except perhaps itself), but it is most certainly an integral part of the human condition. Glanton's gang exists in a Hobbesian nightmare world where might makes right and the weak suffer. Glanton's gang are always aware that there might be a stronger group of killers over the next hill. They do not exist in a vacuum. They are brutal and paranoid. One cannot help but imagine periods throughout history, from the Vietnam War to the Crusades and even further back when life might have been just as cheap. Indeed, Mexico is a feudal state throughout the novel, existing in an incredibly primitive and medieval world that is hundreds of years and thousands of miles removed from the "civilized" world of the cities to the north and east. The lawlessness of the frontier, the absence of borders, and the ease with which the strong may crush and ravage the helpless is reminiscent of a reality that we, in our quiet, comfortable, conformist, and consumerist lives are loath to remember existed for most of human existence, and indeed persists up unto this very day in parts of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, not to mention sub-Saharan Africa. The marauding horsemen that pound over the hills to slaughter the inhabitants of a small town in order to present the scalps to their own Mexican provincial governor (and claim they were Apache) are no different from the Mongol, Cimmerian, Hunnic, or Viking raiders that massacred unarmed noncombatants and warriors alike.

The violence is reality. A reality that people do not like to think about, but they should, and indeed they must. Those who do not appreciate this book for the inexplicable beauty of the language and the graphic horrors of human suffering and cruelty committed and experienced by the characters do not appreciate the comfort and safety in which they live their current bougeois existences.

This is an important book. It is not a celebration of the Mexican, Native American, or U.S. American spirits. It does not paint anyone as suffering from injustice or oppression except the townsfolk, who are often far from innocent themselves. Indeed, everyone is a predator, prey, or a scavenger, on some level, in the socially Darwinian universe that McCarthy crafts so eloquently. This book has no flaws that I could hope to even begin to reveal. If the prose is too dense for the reader, it is no fault of the book, but rather the reader who is not yet capable of reaching the text. If I had attempted to read this book ten years ago, I would never have made it past the third chapter. I had to spend several years reading voraciously and experiencing literature beyond the confines of post-Tolkien fantasy writers. At my current state, I can read the book and even a year later, I cannot help but sit back and ponder its profundity.

One of my close friends in graduate school, and an English Literature student, wrote to me about Blood Meridian. He said:

Blood Meridian is, IMO, the latest in the line of the great American novels, fully a descendant of Moby-Dick, Last of the Mohicans, As I Lay Dying, and Invisible Man. Moreover, it taps into the support/disavowal of colonialism binary that greats like Haggard and Conrad made their careers with. The violence is spectacular and repugnant, the characters loathsome and fascinating; Judge Holden is more creature than man, a concept made reality; in his words, he is the prima donna of a violent dance. He is both the culmination and argument against the logic that painted the Age of Reason, his words chilling to the bone:

“The judge placed his hands on the ground. he looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.”

In a sense, he's the Great Scientist and the West is his laboratory.

Fascinating. My friend goes on to say:

Another element of the book that I found particularly satisfying was the tone of the narrative; the prose style is unparalleled but, more than that, there was a cinematic quality that felt like it was lifted straight out of a western film. When McCarthy talks of the Kid's initial traveling out West, you get a sense of great motion, rather Conan-like, where he journeys through strange towns, encountering even stranger people. When McCarthy speaks of the Kid fighting men from many different lands and feeling ill at ease among their strange languages, you get this wonderful sense of exoticism, of the sort of back room activities that you could sense in Casablanca or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Moreover, his descriptions of the landscape and the Glanton gang progress through it serves as a perfect prose companion to the sort of traveling scenes you would see in a Ford or Sergio Leone film.

I know we've talked about English, especially as it relates to Orwellian notions of its usage, and I feel that McCarthy's prose style is definitively American. It's bizarre, long winded, Neo-Biblical, lyrical at times. Absolutely amazing.

Definitively American is absolutely right. The weight of the Biblical is heavy on McCarthy's prose, and hearkens back to the importance of faith to the Puritan settlers and the elevation of the Bible as American legendarium.

McCarthy's done something amazing with this book. It is probably one of the most important pieces of American literature in the 20th century. I daresay, it's better than Crime and Punishment.

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
Style A+
Substance A+
Overall A++

Book Review -- THE JUDGING EYE by R. Scott Bakker

Almost two years ago, I sat in a coffee shop in Fukuoka Japan with a latte and a copy of R. Scott Bakker's The Judging Eye. I finished it there, at that coffee shop close to my hotel. Since the second novel of The Aspect-Emperor series has just been published under the title The White-Luck Warrior, I thought it was time to dust off The Judging Eye and post my thoughts on it. For my reviews of The Prince of Nothing trilogy, which precedes this book, see my reviews of The Darkness that Comes Before and its two sequels.

The first thing I'll say is that this book, though comparable in size to the previous three volumes that made up The Prince of Nothing, felt much shorter than they. Indeed, it felt as if more happened in the preceding volumes. Not to say that much of the book is filler. It is rather well-paced, and Bakker does this by shifting perspectives from chapter-to-chapter (and even within chapters, on occasion). He has three major plot threads in this novel--the Empress and the court intrigues of the New Empire against an ancient cult of a mother-goddess, the Emperor and his Great Ordeal to destroy the Consult, and Drusas Achamian and his search for the origins of Anasûrimbor Kellhus and the location of the secret Dûnyain fortress.

As usual, Bakker's worldbuilding is woven into his narrative and dialogue. The cultures and traditions of the various societies are played out through the tale, rather than described, and the reader finally gets to see glimpses of the mysterious Empire of Zeüm and the Nonmen, beyond distant rumors and passing references. Especially well-rendered are the Sranc hunters that range the north and northeast for Sranc scalps that they sell for the Emperor's bounty.

Interestingly enough, Bakker chooses to employ a (by now) old fantasy trope--the journey through the darkness (cf. the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings or the Hall of Kings in The Sword of Shannara, for example). But it serves more than simply a point of tension--it serves as a journey into the psyche of the Nonmen, the pre-human inhabitants of Eärwa. The journey is into far more than darkness, and it breaks the sanity of most of the characters, who are all renowned Sranc-hunters and hard fighting men. The inclusion of the Judging Eye, the ability to see good, evil, or even damnation in the soul of another, as well as the fanatic mother-goddess cult and their White-Luck Warrior, are imaginative complications to the narrative.

The characters themselves are also superbly rendered. Each has deep psychological foundations that Bakker appears to have mapped out and developed, with each character revealing his own mind and heart through his actions and words. Although sex, sexuality, and sexual frankness of narrative are much more toned-down in The Judging Eye (which I actually appreciate), the gritty realism is still there--characters void their bowels when they die, and others urinate themselves when terrified, for example. But, tactfully, Bakker never lingers on these things. They happen, he moves on.

Unfortunately, the tale itself does not carry that psychological and philosophical experimentation that the previous novels provided. Although he repeats much of the questions that he raised (and perhaps answered) in previous volumes, this volume fails to tread new ground. It is really just more of the same. Unfortunately, when I was finished, though I had thoroughly enjoyed this work, I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. One reviewer posited that Bakker had "possibly...gotten a lot of his musings out of his system with his recent SF stand-alone Neuropath." If that's the case, in my opinion, The Judging Eye is actually weaker for it.

It also didn't have much of a buildup and/or payoff. Achamian's storyline, which featured the aforementioned descent into darkness, experienced a great increase in dramatic and psychological tension, which finally snapped to bring us a satisfying climax and exciting cliffhanger. However, the other two main plot threads really didn't peak in the same way. The plot thickened, but didn't achieve any sort of critical mass or breaking point. Achamian's story is mostly what carries the reader through the ending.

This doesn't mean that the book is not excellent. Indeed, it is very good. As a stand-alone novel, it is fun, intriguing, and thought-provoking; as the afore-mentioned reviewer commented, The Judging Eye is still "by some margin still the most intellectually-stimulating epic fantasy book since, well, The Thousandfold Thought." But in light of the intellectual challenge and progression-of-thought by which the novels comprising The Prince of Nothing were characterized, I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed. I am taking into account the fact that this is the first novel in a series, and the threads left dangling at the end certainly made me anticipate The White-Luck Warrior, which seems to be selling much better than The Judging Eye had. There's a lot of potential here with this series, and perhaps Bakker is just getting warmed up.

The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker
Style B+
Substance B+
Overall B+

Book Review -- THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS by Poul Anderson

In 1953 a novella was featured in F&SF magazine about a Danish engineer who was knocked out during a battle in World War II against the Germans and awoke to find himself a famous and legendary knight errant in a fantastic version of medieval Europe. It appeared sixteen years after J.R.R. Tolkien had published The Hobbit, and one year before The Fellowship of the Ring. It was later given the full treatment and published as a novel in 1961.

This work is considered highly seminal in the development of 20th century fantasy. It is credited with having had a very heavy impact on E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, designers of role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, inspiring the character class of paladin, the D&D alignment system (especially the original Law-Chaos dichotomy), and the D&D regenerating troll that can only be killed by fire.

Anderson structures his plot in a manner similar to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, with the man-out-of-time-and-place being whacked into a mythic world. He frames the tale as being related by a third party and acquaintance of Holger Carlsen (the protagonist). This frame only really matters in the very beginning and very ending, and the Holger's friend slips into the role of the typical limited subjective narrator. And much like Hank Morgan, Holger's modern scientific know-how gets him out of a few tight jams and saves both himself and his companions--a dwarf and a swan-may with Scottish accents.

All-in-all, the book isn't terrible, but it isn't amazing. Anderson's prose is, I guess, the Asimovian "clear-as-glass" style that so many modern fantasists and science-fiction writers employ. The overall effect is alright, but nothing to write home about. Holger is a pretty consistent character--his earthly experiences have certainly tainted his view of life and events in the fantasy realm in which he finds himself. He's torn between his earthly pragmatism and scientific skepticism as an engineer, and the faith and religiosity of the crusading knight. I can see how he was Gygax's inspiration for the paladin class (people ask him to lay hands on them, for example), but Holger's "lawful" behavior is a product of his earthly training in scientific methodology, not any sort of theological certainty. Indeed, Holger never struck me as a very faithful and virtuous character--just a man who was trying to get home. His courage and bravery, as well as his moral fiber, aren't the stuff of legend, but much more earthy and practical--this makes Anderson's story quite enjoyable and a tad subversive, but again, I see some strain between Holger's character and the paladin of Gygax and Arneson's D&D. Holger's no saint--he's horny and he is a tad unscrupulous, but overall he's honest and a definite do-gooder.

Anderson's channelling of epic medieval romance is excellent. His portrayal of the elves and fairy, his reminder that iron is anathema to them, and the sense of timelessness and chaotic transistasis that the fair folk inhabit is rendered quite well, and helps to create a wonderful sense of atmosphere. Readers should expect lots of magic, enchantment, monsters, spellbound castles, alluring sorceresses, and lots of other staples of romantic medieval adventure.

The ending, however, is a huge let-down. There's all this buildup, but it really doesn't amount to much. The book reads more like the beginning of a saga, which Anderson simply resolves rather swiftly with a brief, forced, and disappointing summary. There's little payoff, and it all comes off as depressingly anti-climatic. What the book really needed was a cliffhanger ending and a sequel where Holger really comes into his own, but we're never given that. All this development takes place throughout the book, but it leads nowhere in the end. Perhaps we're supposed to feel the lurching displacement that Holger himself feels in the end, but I'm not so certain, and I don't think it really works.

Overall, the book is quite enjoyable. It's not very original, it doesn't exhibit breathtakingly epic prose, and the characters (except for Holger) are not especially deep. It's not an incredible piece of fantasy, but it definitely has some value and deserves to be read at least once. I certainly liked it well enough to recommend it.


Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
Style B-
Substance B-
Overall B-

Book Review -- THE DYING EARTH, by Jack Vance

Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed, isolated system temperature, pressure, and chemical potential will eventually achieve equilibrium. All of the energy tends to even out throughout the system. Sometimes, this is referred to as entropy. When we think of entropy, we usually imagine loss of energy, not necessarily energy equalization. But something is lost when energy is equilibrated. What's lost is vitality, motion. The imbalance of energy permits action, transfer and conversion of energy convey motion and collision. When elements within a system bleed energy off to form that equilibrium, those elements seem to die.

It is this sort of energy death that Jack Vance explores in The Dying Earth. I recently reread my 1960s Lancer SF Library edition of this seminal work of its eponymous genre during school vacation. It's not very long, only 160 pages. Within are six stories set on an unnamed continent in a far, far distant future when the sun has grown dim and the inhabitants of the weary Earth imagine that it will one day gutter and flicker out like an exhausted flame.

Through these tales, Vance explores the theme of innocence--an ironic topic considering the setting is a far distant future where everything is slowly dying. However, through her old age, the Earth has regained a shred of her own innocence, as magic and myth have resurfaced, albeit mixed with science and technology. Vance's language invokes that same sense of the legendary and mythopoeic that Tolkien, Dunsany, and Howard possessed, although instead of dwelling in some mythic past when the world was young, he places his era of legend in a dreamlike future full of nostalgia and misty exoticism.

It was night in white-walled Kaiin, and festival time. Orange lanterns floated in the air, moving as the breeze took them. From the balconies dangled flower chains and cages of blue fireflies. The streets surged with the wine-flushed populace, costumed in a multitude of bizarre modes. Here was a Melantine bargeman, here a warrior of Valdaran's Green Legion, here another of ancient times wearing one of the old helmets. In a little cleared space a garlanded courtesan of the Kauchique littoral danced the Dance of the Fourteen Silken Movements to the music of flutes. In the shadow of a balcony a girl barbarian of East Almery embraced a man blackened and in leather harness as a Deodand of the forest. They were gay, these people of waning Earth, feverishly merry, for infinite night was close at hand, when the red sun should finally flicker and go black.

Countries have strange names, such as Kauchique, the Cape of Sad Remembrance, and the Land of the Falling Wall. We read of "orange-haired witches of the Cobalt Mountain; forest sorcerers of Ascolais, white-bearded wizards of the Forlorn Land," and silk-clad princes of "Cansaspara, the city of fallen pylons across the Melantine Gulf." Vance's prose infuses his perpetually twilit world with a sense of storied history.

The ground rose, the trees thinned, and T'sais came out on an illimitable dark expanse. This was Modavna Moor, a place of history, a tract which had borne the tread of many feet and absorbed much blood. At one famous slaughtering, Golickan Kodek the Conqueror had herded here the populations of two great cities, G'Vasan and Bautiku, constricted them in a circle three miles across, gradually pushed them tighter, tighter, tighter, panicked them toward the center within his flapping-armed subhuman cavalry, until at last he had achieved a gigantic squirming mound, half a thousand feet high, a pyramid of screaming flesh. It is said that Golickan Kodek mused ten minutes at his monument, then turned and rode his bounding mount back to the land of Laidenur from whence he had come.

We may only spend a few pages on the Modavna Moor, but that brief description of Golickan Kodek's ride from Laidenur gives the location weight and feeling, and makes it seem a real and actual place. Though Prince Datul Omaet is only mentioned in passing, the fact that he exists, is a sorcerer, and comes from a city of "fallen pylons" from across a sea makes Vance's world just a little bit richer and more fascinating. Vance doesn't flesh everything out with the thoroughness of a Tolkien, but rather keeps his world open and unmapped like Robert E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith, enabling him to broaden and expand it at will.

Though the setting has great potential for nihilistic pessimism, Vance avoids that. In a sense, the decay and imminent death of the Earth is an opportunity to rediscover a romanticism. Though the Earth cannot be saved from its ultimate fate, maybe it could be spiritually redeemed through heroism, sacrifice, bravery, and intelligence. Indeed, there's a great strain of optimism that runs through the entirety of The Dying Earth and defies the sun's exhaustion. The mythic lyricism of Vance's prose is very much a return to an older form, and though he's not the master that Dunsany or Tolkien would be, he does a decent job of it nonetheless.

"Far in the past, far beyond thought, so the legend runs, a race of just people lived in a land east of the Maurenron Mountains, past the Land of the Falling Wall, by the shores of a great sea. They built a city of spires and low glass domes, and dwelt in great content. These people had no god, and presently they felt the need of one whom they might worship. So they built a lustrous temple of gold, glass, and granite, wide as the Scaum River where it flows through the Valley of Graven Tombs, as long again and higher than the trees of the north. And this race of honest men assembled in the temple, and all flung a mighty prayer, a worshipful invocation, and, so legend has it, a god molded by the will of this people was brought into being, and he was of their attributes, a divinity of utter justice.

"The city at last crumbled, the temple became shards and splinters, the people vanished. But the god still remains, rooted forever to the place where his people worshiped him."

Magic plays an enormous part of the setting--both in its romantic nostalgia and in its entropic decay.

At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses, and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam--Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East--swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated--though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Ponticella the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed, and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city of Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man.

The spells are described as "so cogent" that characters can only fit a limited number of them into their brains at any given time. Upon casting of these spells, the release of magical energy wipes the formulas from the sorcerers' minds. This is exactly what role-playing-gamers describe when discussing "Vancian magic" in games like Dungeons & Dragons. Indeed, E. Gary Gygax and David Arneson were directly influenced by Jack Vance's setting when they were designing D&D, and elected to try to capture the feel of Vance's magical system in their game. This is obviously how Vance's The Dying Earth found its way into Gygax's heavily influential Appendix N.

This interesting mixture of innocence and romanticism amidst decay and entropy is combined with another major theme that runs through his books--justice and redemption. Characters either surrender to their base desires and lusts for power, or they can achieve a sort of moral epiphany and seek to do right. Such characters as T'sais, Turjan of Miir, Etarr, through love, sacrifice, bravery, and loss manage to achieve redemption and have their courage recognized. Other characters, like Liane the Wayfarer and Mazirian, get a satisfying comeuppance. Though Vance's world is dominated by decadence and dark forces, the just, good, and brave can definitely make a positive difference in the world, and Vance's stories are of those exceptional people who manage to overcome obstacles both internal and external.

One may say that all of these good deeds are for naught, since the sun is fading and eternal night is immanent, but the tenor and texture of the narratives do not suggest that this was Vance's aim. Rather, the author seems to feel that his protagonists really do matter and that their actions truly have a positive impact in spite of the looming heat-death of the world. Though cities crumble to dust and the sun continues to fade, magic and wonder still persists, and the world can still be enchanted, right up to the very end.

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Style B+
Substance B
Overall B+

Book Review -- A FEAST FOR CROWS, by George R.R. Martin

With all this talk about nihilism in fantasy, even Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation had something to say about it in a recent video game review. The inexhaustible banter between various sides has actually left me a bit in the lurch, torn between a rollicking good time reading gratuitous sex and violence on a medieval scale and the demands of decent taste. Well, instead of launching forward discussing the state of fantasy fiction any further, I'm taking a break from reading Takami Koushun's teenage slaughterfest Battle Royale to belatedly put down my thoughts on George R.R. Martin's fourth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Feast for Crows. (For my earlier reviews of the preceding volumes see A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords).

Understanding why and how this novel was written is key to understanding the novel as a whole. Martin claims to have never really intended to write this novel, nor the upcoming A Dance with Dragons, until he realized that he couldn't simply jam everything he felt needed to be conveyed through flashbacks in the upcoming novels. So, he originally intended to write a single novel to bridge the gap between A Storm of Swords and the fifth book. However, book four ended up becoming so large that he had to split it in half, and so A Feast for Crows is only half the bridge with the upcoming A Dance with Dragons covering all of the character perspectives that weren't covered by book four.

Thus, A Feast for Crows is interesting from the standpoint of character development, but in terms of plot development, we really don't get anything until the end, and that end is more of a setup for events that will take place in book six. Given the length of time between book releases lately, it will be a wonder if Martin will ever finish this series. However, I'm hoping that the sixth novel comes out much quicker, since the bridge part of the story was something that Martin wasn't as interested in telling, but he certainly felt it needed to be told.

And that's pretty much it. The entire book is a setup for the events that will take place either during or after the winter. By the novel's end, winter has begun, and it wouldn't be surprising if things basically slowed to a complete stop. Almost all of the characters have been placed in positions where Martin can easily pick them back up years later down the timeline. A number of very satisfying conclusions have occurred for several characters. But other characters seem to be hanging by a thread and their fates are uncertain. It's not a bad read as books go, and it isn't really filler in a Jordanesque sense, where characters simply sit around plotting and those plots never come to fruition until three 1,000+-page novels have been completed. There's storyline payoff, but those payoffs are weak compared to what Martin could have done.

I don't feel like Martin is stretching his story out on purpose. Instead, I get the impression that he's not certain how to cram everything in that he wants to. We get precious little of the Ironmen storyline, or of Arya Stark's development, with the lion's share of the book going to the Lannisters (Jaime and Cersei) and Brienne. Samwell's thread and the events in Dorne get a pretty fair shake. However, its the brevity with which Martin handles Arya's, Sansa's, and the Greyjoy's storylines that make them so strong and inspiring. It's easy to get sick of the constant plotting and scheming of Cersei Lannister throughout the novel, although Martin does give us a pretty satisfying conclusion to her storyline at the end of the novel.

When compared to previous volumes, this one is definitely a bridge, and it feels like it, too. The real situation was wrapped up in A Storm of Swords. In A Feast for Crows, Martin is simply prepping us for whatever happens after A Dance with Dragons. As ever, his characterizations are believable, his grasp of character psychology thorough. There's plenty here to keep a reader going. Seeing how Samwell Tarly, Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, and Arya Stark all evolve as characters, how they face their individual challenges and quandaries. Sam continues to find inner reserves of strength and bravery, Jaime is forced to deal with the realities of his sister's ambition and ceaseless plotting and struggles with his own ethical and moral compass that is often in conflict with what other men consider honor, Brienne struggles to fulfill the many (and sometimes contradictory) oaths she's made, and Arya begins to detach herself from her past and become something new. These threads are the best parts of the novel.

Martin has, perhaps, given hints as to where, finally, he intends to take this series of his at the end. But a lot remains to be seen. A large number of characters are not to be seen in this novel, but their shadows still loom heavily across the plot's landscape--especially Daenerys Targaryen. I wouldn't suggest that this book is nihilistic as others claim. Oaths and oathbreaking dominate this book, as does plotting and conspiracy. There most heroic characters--Jaime, Brienne, and yes, Sam--struggle with oaths and honor alike. The storylines of Cersei, the Dornish, and Sansa are all hotbeds of intrigue, and Petyr proves himself to be a master politician in contrast to Cersei or the naïve, quasi-heroic intrigues of the Dornish princesses. This book is nowhere near as sluggish and filler-laden as it is reputed to be. Its only in comparison to the previous volumes that A Feast for Crows really seems to be lacking anything.

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
Style B
Substance B
Overall B

Book Review -- THE BLACK COMPANY by Glen Cook

In May of 1984, The Black Company emerged on the fantasy scene, telling the story of a mercenary company with a long legacy from the perspective of that company's historian. The author, a certain Glen Cook, would go on two publish two more novels within the next year, to create a trilogy entitled The Book of the North, a record of the Black Company's exploits on the northern continent of Cook's fantasy world.

Cook's company is a fully realized unit of hardened veterans. His characterizations are accomplished through action and behavior, all of which is observed and relayed by Croaker, the company physician and keeper of the annals. They're a group of misfits, ne'er-do-wells, sellswords, and thugs that are united in a brotherhood of arms and a code of honor.

This sounds rather generic, but it is in Cook's description of the characters' actions and behaviors where the multi-faceted personalities really assume multiple dimensions. Some of the characters get short shrift, such as the Captain, but others are very-much realized, like One-Eye, Goblin, Elmo, and Raven. But the real protagonist of the story is the Black Company itself. The company is a sort of refuge and home for those who would otherwise have no place and belong nowhere. Each character that joins the company fits into the group and belongs there. By creating this company, Cook is creating a kind of brotherhood of soldiers and exploring the camaraderie that develops between the men.

This isn't necessarily unique, as a multitude of novels have been published outside of the fantasy genre that explore these sorts of themes. Where Cook is innovative, however, is with the nature of the Company's moral and ethical dilemma. The opening finds them trapped in a contract that they are bound to fulfill, and honor demands that they complete it. The populace of the city that they are garrisoning resents their occupation and violently take to the streets against them. In order to get out of their contract without breaking it, the Captain signs the proverbial pact with the Devil and commits the company to the service of the Lady--a resurrected sorceress from an earlier age who seeks to rebuild her Domination over the entire northern continent. The Company, apparently, has gotten more than they bargained for, since now they are not only caught within the web of political machinations and backstabbing among the Lady's powerful sorcerer-generals, they also realize that they are on the wrong side of a war--they are fighting for the bad guys.

In this manner, Cook peers into the hearts and souls of those forces whom the average fantasy reader finds him/herself cheering against, and makes us cheer for them. It's a pretty slick subversion of the genre. The characters aren't the wonderful heroes that we are used to in fantasy.

"You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest."

Later, the narrative continues.

"I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams. Not that they didn't deserve disturbing. They were foul. I was doing unspeakable things with a couple of girls that could not have been more than twelve, and making them love it. It's disgusting, the shadows that lurk in my mind."

The protagonist, Croaker, often puts himself up as an example of the sort of decadence and perversion that is common in the Black Company. Yet Croaker's honesty and his guilt are his redemption. He refuses to report on the sins and excesses of his brethren, although he's not afraid to convey his own misdeeds--even those in his dreams. Croaker, at heart, wants to do the right thing, and his own personal struggle--service to a dark sorceress, is inextricably linked with the Company's own ethical dilemma. Croaker is the quiet conscience of the Black Company, the small spark that redeems his fellows not only in the pages of the Annals, but also in his deeds and decisions throughout the book.

Croaker's own struggles embody the struggles of the Company as a whole, and as his connection to the Lady grows throughout the novel, so does the vital role that the Company will play in her plans. They become the focal point for everything, and Croaker becomes a focal point for the plot. When he is faced with the reality that evil is everywhere, it reflects the situation the Company has found itself in.

"'I know you, Annalist. I have opened your soul and peered inside. You fight for me because your company has undertaken a commission it will pursue to the bitter end--because its principal personalities feel its honor was stained in Beryl. And that though most of you think you're serving Evil.

"'Evil is relative, Annalist. You can't hang a sign on it. You can't touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger. Where you stand now, because of your oath, is opposite the Dominator. For you he is where your Evil lies.'"

Croaker, like the Company, is confronted with a few uncomfortable truths. The real struggle of the novel is whether Croaker can maintain his moral center or if he succumbs to relativism and/or nihilism and simply sides with the lesser evil. Croaker's struggle inside is a microcosm of the struggle of the entire Black Company.

This novel was obviously quite influential on Stephen Erikson's Gardens of the Moon. Indeed, the Bridgeburners of the Malazan Army seem to have been modeled on the Black Company. There's no direct analogy, but naming conventions (Mallet, Hedge, Fiddler, etc. of the Bridgeburners compared to Goblin, Three-fingers, Jolly, Silent, etc. of the Black Company) show definite similarities. These are obviously not birth-names, but names assumed upon enlistment--a kind of eschewing the past along with one's old name in order to begin a new life with the unit.

Cook successfully meditates upon the life of the rank-and-file soldiers of the fantasy antagonist without descending into grandiose levels of angst and pessimism. He handles the ethics of the Black Company and its dilemma with enough finesse and doesn't hammer us with long, winding passages of introspection, keeping Croaker's soliloquies elegantly brief and allowing us to internalize the Company's dilemma more effectively. The worldbuilding isn't incredible, and simply screams "generic medieval fantasy setting" at the top of its lungs. But it isn't worldbuilding we're here for. We're here for the Company--Croaker and his brethren--and their heroism in a war in which they're on the side of evil.

As a side-note, it should be mentioned that the Black Company's name originated with the racial composition of the unit during its formation--the first roster drew almost entirely from the black-skinned natives of the southern continent, and only One-Eye and Tom-Tom (who are wizard-brothers) remain from that levy. The remainder, it is implied are likely dusky or olive-skinned Mediterranean types with dark hair. This is very interesting, because fantasy has always been one of those genres that is extremely ossified when it comes to race. I personally believe that the racial makeup of most fantasy novels is a holdover from older European folk tales and stories, so it would figure that Caucasians would figure so prominently in the tales. But it is interesting to mention that black characters not only made it into this novel, but indeed are more than simply stereotypes (at least so far as One-Eye is concerned).

The Black Company by Glen Cook
Style B
Substance B
Overall B