Here’s yet another book by Lars Walker; I liked it almost as much as I
liked The Year of the Warrior, although it’s different in
almost every way, being set in the near future instead of the distant past.
The one thing they have in common is that both are tales of the clash of
conflicting worldviews: the struggle of pagan Scandinavia against the
coming of the White Christ in one case, and the struggle of a tired, emaciated
Christianity against the new paganism in the other. Though perhaps I
should say new paganisms instead, for Walker includes not only the overtly
neo-pagan, but also the Gnostic paganism that’s been creeping into the
mainstream Christian denominations over the last few decades.

Walker has written a book that is both a tale, well-told, and a
cautionary look at the end point of certain current trends. In his
near-future America, the only real gods are the twins of
multi-culturalism and diversity. It is illegal to use racial or ageist
epithets. Every town has a Happy Endings euthanasia clinic; every person
has a right to die when they wish. The Extinctionists are a growing
political force; they believe that the Earth can best be preserved by the
extinction of humanity. The Definition of Religion Act, passed
unanimously by Congress, determines which sects will be recognized
legally as religions, worthy of receiving tax-exempt status–and only
those sects which accept that all religions are equally valid pass the
test.

Yes, it’s a bit unlikely–it was meant to be extreme. I think we have
too much sense as a nation to go so far astray. But every one of the
points I mention is a simple extrapolation of a current trend.

That’s the background. The foreground is a small college town named
Epsom, Minnesota, home of a small “Lutheran” college. The scare quotes
are required; the school still has a chapel and holds services there, but
our hero, Carl Martell, was hired as a professor there mostly because he
wasn’t Christian–something to do with diversity requirements.

It’s an interesting time in Epsom, which is an old-fashioned Minnesota
community. A bachelor-farmer died recently, and his farm has been taken
over as a commune by a neo-pagan group from California; it’s making a few
people nervous, and there’s a lot of angry sentiment in town.
Meanwhile, the college is being visited by a famous
Norwegian poet named Sigfod Oski, a controversial figure and avowed pagan
who delights in shaking things up.

And what he’s after at the moment is bringing back Odin the All-Father.
Not for Oski the pale neo-paganism of today–he’s after the
blood-drenched paganism of yore. And only Carl Martell and a few others
stand in his way.

As I say, I enjoyed it. G.K. Chesterton often talked about the wild
romance of Christianity, the glorious adventure of it. It didn’t
surprise me when Walker captured that glorious romance in
The Year of the Warrior; the setting was tailor-made for it.
It does surprise me that he managed to capture it so well in a tale set
in modern-day Minnesota.

I got hit by the “lipitor guy” again; 120 more spam comments. This time it took me only about five minutes to clean up the mess, instead of an hour. Very, very nice.

It took me several tries to get past the first 100 pages of this book. I
picked it up thinking it was similar to the Vlad Taltos series and got mired
down in the language and details of the story. Will gave me words of
encouragement so I went back to it and started over, mentally shunting aside
any thoughts about Vlad and enjoying it for what it is on it’s own.

On it’s own, it’s really good. One of the first things I noticed is that
Brust has total control over his narrator. The book operates on two levels.
There is the general story of Khaavren and his fellow Guardsmen and the
intrigues of the Court and the Empire. There is also the story that the
narrator, Sir Paarfi of Roundwood, is telling. The narrator’s voice is as
much a character in the story as the actual participants in the events that
he is telling about.

Brust is writing a blatant ripoff of the style and some of the plot elements
in Alexander Dumas‘ Three Musketeer books. (Click the link, if you aren’t
familiar with them.) The best known is The Three Musketeers but Dumas went
on to continue the story in 4 more volumes, three of which are actually
subdivisions of one book. So, like Dumas’ books, this book is a historical
romance, a swashbuckling tale of sword fighting and dueling with a love
interest and court intrigues. It’s wordy and has long, complex sentences and
takes forever to get to the point. And that is what is so fun about it.

One suggestion I would make to any reader coming to this series after
reading the Vlad Taltos series is to read the Author’s preface and the two
About the Author sections at the end before beginning the book proper. It
will clue you into the narrator’s voice and how it relates to the action of
the story.

OK, I’ve upgraded to MovableType 3.0. The blogging interface looks about the same as the version I’d been using…a little less eye-candy, but then it seems to load more quickly too. Of the changes I’ve noticed, the best one is that there’s a now a comments page where I can see all of the posted comments–and delete them by mass quantities if necessary.

Anyway, we’ll see how this works; if the site behaves oddly for you, please let me know!

This is a family blog, more or less, so I can’t tell you how I really feel about the rude individual who posted approximately 120 individual pieces of spam in this weblog’s comments section today. It took me about an hour to delete all of them.

I’d planned to post another book review tonight, but instead I’m looking into upgrading to a later version of Movable Type.

Fair disclosure: I read this book because the author’s publicist
sent me a review copy.

No Secrets is a thriller, the second volume in Rucker’s series about
Brandon Drake the “high-tech information agent”. (The first, which I’ve
not read, is called Intimate Falls.) It’s published by
Lochenlode Fiction–say that name out loud.

Drake is just wrapping up a job in Japan, collecting information
from the lab of an expatriate American named Ansel. Completely legally,
I might add. Ansel is an absent minded genius inventor whose motto is
“No national boundaries. No secrets.”; in other words, he’ll give his
inventions to anyone except those who would use them to enforce national
boundaries. In the current instance he’s invented a tiny robotic arm
for use in dentistry, and Drake has been hired to get the design and
related information from Ansel and bring it to a professor in Canada.
In short, the entire job is completely above-board.

But something goes wrong. Drake’s main contact in Ansel’s lab turns up
dead. The documents are stolen from Drake’s hotel room. And suddenly
Drake and his primary love interest (there are two) are on the run
from…someone…who thinks Drake knows more than he’s saying.

There’s a lot to like here. Ansel’s a genuinely interesting character,
and Rucker evokes the Japanese setting delightfully. With the exception
of a few short lapses, the suspense is well-maintained. The villains are
nasty, and the climax ties up most of the loose threads.

On the other hand…

The prose style is weird, especially in the first few chapters. The
first paragraph appears to be first person, and then Rucker moves
jarringly to the third person. There are several other jarring
viewpoint shifts in the course of the book. There are lots of sentence
fragments, and some of the sentences are just plain weird. For example, the
following sentences appears in the opening scene. Drake is at a hot
springs spa, looking for his interpreter in the hot baths:

The grey eyes of the tall, fair-skinned, lanky, tried to
perforate the steam nebula and wondered again where Yamamoto might
be.

See what I mean? The phrase “perforate the steam nebula” is absurd,
as is the implication that it’s Drake’s “grey eyes” that “wondered again”.
Thankfully, most of the stylistic peculiarities evaporate once Rucker
is well started.

Too much of the book is taken up with a romantic subplot between Drake
and his once-upon-a-time housemate and occasional lover, Mikki Sullivan.
Rucker uses it to humanize Drake and fill in some of his backstory, but
frankly I didn’t find Mikki or her past history all that enthralling.
And the character I did find compelling, Ansel the inventor, is rarely
on stage–and, ultimately, not all that important.

Finally, although Brandon Drake is supposed to be a pretty shrewd guy he
misses a number of obvious things–at least, until he’s hit over the head
with them. And he never does realize the most important fact–that he’s
clearly being used throughout the book. Actually, that’s my
interpretation of the story, as the book never says so in so many words;
it’s just the only way that I can explain a number of events in the book
that are otherwise just as absurd as Rucker’s prose excesses.

In sum, the book had some very good moments, but it didn’t hang together
all that well for me. I didn’t find Brandon Drake all that interesting,
either, alas. Pity.

Here’s the second in Lustbader’s current series, the Saga of the Pearl.

In the last episode, the Dar-al-Salat, the savior of Kundala, was saved
from death by a dangerous ritual performed by Giyan the Ramahan
sorceress. The ritual was successful, but since then Giyan has been
afflicted by a horrible skin condition on her hands and forearms. In this
book we discover that through an error in the ritual she made an opening
through which the archdaemon Horologgia has been able to begin escaping
from the Abyss. Worse, the archdaemon intends to take over Giyan’s
body–and, ultimately, all of her sorcerous powers. The Dar-al-Salat
must find the Veil of Thousand Tears, a relic of the creation of the
planet Kundala, to save Giyan from daemonic possession–for without Giyan
the Dar-al-Salat won’t be able to free the planet from the scourge of the
V’orrn.

It’s yet another fine piece of storytelling, even if the premise and the
execution are sometimes a little goofy. The characters develop in
interesting ways, and we find out more about the V’orrn, and in
particular about the Gyrgon. The V’orrn have a caste-based society, and
the Gyrgon–a caste of genetically-engineered cyborgs–are the top caste.
They are greatly feared by the other castes, and are rarely seen in
public, ruling primarily through the Regent, the leader of the Bashkir,
or merchant, class. Little is known about the Gyrgon, but we get to
learn quite a bit more here, and much that was obscure in the previous
book is made clear.

Perhaps the most satisfying thing is that both this book and its
predecessor have been properly structured; each book really is a
complete novel by itself. All too often in multi-volume fantasy sagas
it’s all one long story chopped arbitrarily into volumes. Instead, each
of these books has its own particular conflict which it tracks from
beginning to end. Nicely done.

Spinelli is a well-known children’s author. I’ve seen his books on lists for
kids put out by the library and by other various organizations in the know
and I’ve heard from my kid’s teachers recommendations for a couple of his
books. My daughter read this one and handed it to me with an admonition to
“read it, Mom, it’s, like, really good.” Anytime a kid says that to you, it
behooves you to, like, pay attention. The librarian may make all the lists
she can handle and teachers can recommend til they’re blue in the face, but
if a kid doesn’t read books, it’s an academic exercise.

So I picked it up and read it. The narrator of the story is Leo Borlock. Leo
is a bit of a geek. He produces a local cable show about high school
students called “Hot Seat.” He fits in with the kids at school but isn’t in
the “popular” group. He has figured out how to get along and not stick out.
He lives in an Arizona town dominated by a software company where everyone’s
Dad works. And he collects porcupine neckties.

For his fourteenth birthday, his Mom calls some info into the paper about
him for their local birthday column, noting that he collects porcupine
neckties. And when he comes home from school, there is one waiting for him.
No name, no card, just a note saying “Happy Birthday.” And no one he knows
will take the credit for giving it to him.

At the beginning of his junior year in high school, there is a new girl in
school. She calls herself Stargirl. She says hello to everyone. She plays
the ukulele at school. She has a pet rat she brings to school. She dresses
oddly in prairie dresses or costumes. She knows everyone’s birthday and
sings to them The Song in the cafeteria at lunch. She is totally oblivious
to the social hierarchy and the complex culture of high school. She has been
homeschooled up to this point. She is what we call in our house A Free
Spirit. Everyone is amazed by her. Leo is fascinated.

Initially she enchants the school. Kids vie for her attention. She is
popular with everyone. But then she starts making mistakes. You can’t be a
free spirit unwilling to conform and fit in in high school. This is the story
of what happened to her that year, of how she tried to compromise and how
the kids at school handled it. In some ways it’s a celebration of Stargirl’s
unwillingness to lose her essential self to the herd mentality; in others is
a grim tale of what kids do to those that don’t comply with the social
standards. And it’s the story of Leo’s dilemma of loving Stargirl and being
unwilling to stand up for her when the going gets tough.

I am glad my daughter gave it to me to read. She is a Free Spirit. I learned
a little about her from reading about Stargirl. She’s right. It is, like
really a good book.

Be forewarned. Visit Cicadaville, and find out everything you need to know about these deadly creatures–before it’s too late.

…Edgar Allan Poe had written the Dick and Jane books?.

Via Mark Shea’s blog.