This is the last of the lot of books by Nevil Shute that I picked up six months or so ago; Ian Hamet had suggested that I keep it for last. I’ve held off reading it for quite a while now, because, of course, once I’ve read it I can never enjoy reading it for the first time again. (Yeah, I’ve come to think a lot of ol’ Nevil.)

Anyway, it was a joy and a delight, I loved it, and you should all go find a copy in a used bookstore and read it.

What, you need convincing? Look, I promise, it’s worth your time. You’ll enjoy it more if you don’t know anything about it.

For those who insist on knowing more before skittering off to the local receiver of pre-read literature (what one might call a “white-paged fence”, I suppose) here’s the set-up–note that I’m trying to tell you as little as possible.

Keith Stewart is an engineer who delights in making model engines and machines of various kinds–working models. Steam engines, gasoline engines, diesel engines, generators, clocks of all kinds, all at very small sizes. He builds them, and he writes about how to build them for a weekly magazine called Miniature Mechanic. In fact, although he doesn’t know it, he’s their biggest draw.

When Keith’s sister and her husband die in a tragic accident, Keith and his wife are left with Keith’s ten-year-old niece, Janice. Janice inherits her parent’s estate, with Keith as the trustee. Janice’s parents were reasonably well-off, and there ought to be plenty of money to pay for Janice’s education…but all the lawyer can find of the estate is fifty-six pounds. There ought to be quite a lot more, if only Keith can find it.

Keith’s income is barely adequate for his family’s needs. He and his wife Katie are quite willing to stretch it as necessary for Janice’s sake…but on their own they can’t give her the education her parents wanted for her.

Our Keith is a conscientious man; and he’s Janice’s trustee. And he’s an engineer…which means that problems are to be solved.

It’s quite an interesting ride; you should try it.

My sister gave me this book for my birthday, and I’m grateful. Jasper Fforde, you may recall, is the author of the delightfully silly “Thursday Next” novels, The Eyre Affair and its sequels. The Big Over Easy is the first in a new, unrelated series that concerns the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading CID in Reading, England. DI Jack Spratt handles all of the cases in the vicinity of Reading that involve pigs, wolves, beanstalks, billy goats gruff, giants, et al, including, in this case, the demise of one Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty.

As the book begins, Jack’s in a bit of a down phase; the jury has just acquitted three pigs of the wrongful death of a wolf who was climbing down their chimney. The investigation cost the taxpayers a quarter-of-a-million pounds, and it’s even possible that the NCD might be closed at the next budget review–so when it develops that Humpty Dumpty was shot, Jack’s determined (with the help of Detective Sergeant Mary Mary) to track down the killer in double-quick time.

What follows is a delightfully oddball tale which is, in fact, a pretty good murder mystery at the same time. Fforde has a knack for creating screwball worlds somewhat like our own and yet deliciously off. In Fforde’s England, for example, all of the best detectives–Inspector Moose of Oxford, Inspect Dogleash, Miss Maple, and many others, including Reading’s own Chief Detective Inspector Friedland Chymes–are members of the Guild of Detectives, which has, among its other functions, the task of negotiating publication rights with such worthy periodicals as Amazing Crime Stories. To be successful, a detective must not only be able to catch the perpetrator; he must also run his investigation in a thrilling, well-paced, narratively-satisfying way. And, of course, he must have an Official Sidekick who’s well-able to write his cases up for publication.

The Big Over Easy gets off to a bit of a slow start, and I think it tries a little too hard now and then; but it’s also genuinely funny and filled with scads of allusions and odd links between rhymes and fairytales that would never have occurred to me on my own. Oh, and there are at least two Monty Python references, one of them nicely subtle.

I enjoyed the Thursday Next books, except for the latest, Something Rotten, which I’ve not yet read; but this one’s at least as good, and possibly better. All in all, I’m looking forward to the sequel. I do wonder how many books he can add to the series before the gag gets stale, though.

Mapletree7 posts that she finds this post of mine to be (charitably, perhaps) “somewhat prickly,” makes a couple of observations, and asks me a fair question:

I’m not Wiccan. But I’m not Christian either. I’m Jewish. Until fairly recently, there haven’t been many positive portrayals of Jews in literature. It’s been pretty much Shylock & Fagin all the way. And these twisted ideas of Jews were used to justify the worst kind of hatred and violence.

Do you know, the notion of changing the text of S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire so that it would suit me better hadn’t occurred to me until M7 asked this question? It’s Stirling’s book, not mine; if I got into the business of modifying all of the books that trouble me in some way or other I’d have no time for anything else. And if I were to start editing my environment in that way (as if I could), there are a host of targets I’d pick on before I ever got around to Stirling’s portrayal of Wiccans…or to Wiccans in general, so far as that goes.

What troubles me about Stirling’s book is that it implies that Wicca has gotten a firm toehold in American society, something I’d not previously realized. Given that I think that Wicca is manifestly false at best and spiritually dangerous to its practitioners at worst, I think that’s a bad thing. Not the worst defect our society has, by a long shot, but a step in the wrong direction, especially for the folks involved.

Now, M7 has pointed out that negative and unfair stereotypes of the Jews have often been used to justify horrible crimes. M7’s right, of course. But surely there’s rather a large step between stating publically that a religious movement is theologically bankrupt and encouraging persecution of members of that movement? The appropriate response to perfectly legal activities which I happen to dislike is honest criticism, which is what I’ve tried to do. Intellectual battles are fought in print, not in the street.

The Tensor has up a cool post about Steven Brust; turns out he’s been in a comic book, along with fellow writer Emma Bull, who I’ve actually met; she and her husband Will Shetterly used to do writing workshops here in L.A., and I attended one of them once. Nice lady. I’ve not met Mr. Brust, though.

When Vlad Taltos was a punk kid, getting beat up regularly on the streets of Adrilankha, his father owned a restaurant. As a result, Vlad learned how to defend himself, how to beat up people who were bigger and stronger than he was, how to cook, and how to appreciate well-prepared food. Vlad sold the restaurant a few years after his father’s untimely death, but throughout his career as a free-lance assassin and “boss” for the Jhereg (the Dragaeran Empire’s version of the Mafia) he has retained his love for exquisite cuisine. And in almost every volume in the series to date, he has mentioned Valabar’s, the best restaurant in Adrilankha, and possibly the oldest restaurant in the entire Empire. For its entire history, Valabar’s has been run by the same family of Easterners (humans, that is); that Valabar’s has survived for so long, in an Empire where Easterners are second-class citizens at best and hated enemies at worst, is a tribute to Mr. Valabar’s skill, delicate touch, and creativity.

However, in none of the Vlad books to date has Vlad actually stepped foot in Valabar’s while he’s actually on-stage. With Dzur, all of that changes. Yes, this is a fantasy novel for your inner foodie.

A little background. Vlad, as I say, grew up tough. His father, eager to be accepted in the Empire, spent all of his savings to buy a title in House Jhereg, the only one of the Empire’s seventeen Houses that accepts Easterners as members–and then, only because there is money to be made. It’s not true that all Jhereg are criminals; many are not. But Jheregs always have an eye on the main chance, and on making a profit, and they are generally engaged in those activities which, though not strictly legal, are yet always in demand. At the age of seventeen (there’s that number again) Vlad goes to work for a small-time Jhereg boss as an enforcer. He takes on additional duties, and begins to do assassinations on the side. Eventually he becomes a boss himself, managing a number of illicit enterprises. In the mean time, he’s made some unusual friends for an Easterner and a Jhereg, including a number of extremely powerful nobles (both magically and politically) from the House of the Dragon.

Let’s be clear. Vlad is not a nice guy. He kills people for money. He sends enforcers to rough up folks who won’t pay back his usurious loans. But he’s not without virtues. He’s loyal to those who are loyal to him. He’s witty. He’s smart. For a murdering S.O.B. he’s got a certain integrity. And he’s a survivor.

Eventually, after some goings on that involve his wife and the impoverished Easterner’s ghetto in South Adrilankha, he finds himself at odds with his higher-ups in the Jhereg. In fact, he annoys them so thoroughly that he finds a price on his head…a fabulously large one, in fact. It is axiomatic that if you betray the Jhereg, you are a dead man walking…but far from waiting to be killed, Vlad takes it on the lam. A number of years elapse, during which time Vlad has a number of adventures and makes a number of discoveries. Then, two of his friends disappearunder mysterious circumstances; his other friends manage to contact him, and he spends a book (Issola) helping to extricate them, and manages to help preserve the World As He Knows It at the same time. Afterwards he’s tired, disgusted, depressed, and sick of living in the wilderness where no one knows how to make a decent cup of klava. Damn it, it’s not safe, but before he heads out again he’s going to take a chance. He’s going to have dinner at Valabar’s for the first time in years, and he’s going to enjoy it, and if anyone wants to kill him they’ll just have to wait until he finishes the meal.

And that’s where Dzur begins. Nobles of the House of the Dzur are big tough wizards and warriors (usually both at once) who like nothing better than to wade into a fight at impossible odds. If they are defending something noble and good, so much the better; this gives them additional motivation. Vlad has his meal at Valabar’s with a young Dzurlord–a meal that is described, over the course of the book, in exquisite detail; and then he has to deal with new developments in South Adrilankha. Vlad would never be mistaken for a Dzur…but it appears that it’s time for him to act like one.

So much for the background. Steven Brust is one of the few authors whose books I buy in hardcover, and along with Lois McMaster Bujold and Terry Pratchett, he’s one of the even small group of authors whose books I read aloud to Jane as soon as we get them. As it happens, I’ve spent a fair amount of time this summer re-reading most of the Vlad books aloud to Jane, so Dzur‘s timing was wonderful, and we enjoyed it thoroughly. On the other hand, while a number of interesting things happen little is actually resolved in terms of Vlad’s larger story arc; this was a bit of a disappointment. Consequently, I offer this advice: if you’ve been reading the series in paperback, wait for the paperback. And if you’ve not been reading the series at all, there’s a trade paperback available called The Book of Jhereg, which includes the first three Vlad novels; go buy it. (Don’t let the third one, Teckla, put you off; it’s a bit heavy going, but it’s worth it, as it’s a pivotal book in the series.)

The Eternity Artifact is L.E. Modesitt, Jr.‘s riff on an old science fiction chestnut, the lone artifact of a deceased alien society which causes a war among the various countries or factions or races or star nations, all of which want to plunder it for the secrets of its advanced technology. It’s reasonably entertaining, and Modesitt has added a few unique twists of his own. That said, I can’t really describe it as a success. One of the twists is a series of reflections on science, religion, and the epistemology of “true believers”, and his conclusions on the latter two grounds would strike anyone but a diehard philosophical materialist as absurd. I don’t know whether Modesitt is a materialist or not–it’s always dangerous to assume that the views of the characters of a book represent the views of the author. But the bad guys in the book belong to a group that appears to be patterned after the Mormon Church, which he’s picked on before. He’s a resident of Utah, according to the bio in the back of the book; maybe he’s a non-believer and living among Mormons grates on him, or perhaps he was raised Mormon and is writing about what he knows.

I can’t explain the circumstances which the religious folks in the book supposedly find intolerable without giving away too much of the plot, but really, it didn’t work. Not a bad read, though, if a bit silly.

A day late, granted, but the August issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line.

S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire begins with the end of the world as we know it. One morning, for reasons unknown, all higher technology ceases to work. All electrical gadgets are nonfunctional. Guns will not fire. Steam pressure will no longer drive an engine. Cars run off the road; food spoils in refrigerators; jumbo jets fall out of the sky. The cause is and remains unclear; one character opines that “Alien Space Bats” have chosen to drive mankind back to the pre-industrial age.

As with Eric Flint’s 1632 series, the cause is almost immaterial; the interest is in how our heroes adapt to the change in circumstances. Stirling gives us two primary viewpoint characters; the first is Mike Havel, ex-Marine and bush pilot. He’s flying the wealthy Larsson family from Oregon to their ranch in Montana when the Change occurs. His story begins as he draws on his strength and his backwoods experience to get the Larssons to safety–and on his memories of his Marine gunnery sergeant to get the best effort from each of the people in his charge–a group that continues to grow throughout the book.

The second viewpoint character is Juniper Mackenzie, folk musician and Wiccan “High Priestess”. Quicker to see the implications of the Change than most, she immediately leaves the city of Corvallis with her daughter and a close friend for her cabin out in the woods. She’s hoping that other members of her coven will join her there; in the mean time, the goal is to survive through the Dying Time that she can clearly see approaching. Others begin to cluster around her, just as they do around Havel.

Both of these groups realize that the world has become a very dangerous place; there is not enough to go around, and if they do not defend themselves they’ll be destroyed. Both, in addition, are more or less on the side of the angels–they’ll play fair with anyone who’ll play fair with them. Their styles, however, quite different. Mackenzie and her friends, and those who join them, immediately settle down to practical matters: getting the crops planted, so they’ll survive the winter–and learning how to fight, so they can survive those who would take their harvest from them. Over time they begin to build a society based on consensus, decency, and honesty–but it’s very clear (much to her chagrin) that all involved look to “Lady Juniper” as their leader.

Havel’s first goal is to get the Larssons from Idaho (where they crash) to their country estate in Oregon. Like Clan Mackenzie, Havel’s group emphasizes both the crafts and skills needed in the post-Change world, but also swordplay, archery, and horsemanship. Where Clan Mackenzie is settled in one place, Havel’s group is mobile, trading skills and the things they make with the settled groups they pass. Being decent people, they rescue a number of folks from fates worse than death, first as they see need, and eventually as a matter of business. By the time they reach central Oregon Havel is leading what’s essentially a band of knights (though he doesn’t think of it in those terms) called the Bearkillers.

Mike and Juniper aren’t the only ones to see the possibilities of the post-Change world, of course; and their chief antagonist is the Protector, a former professor of Medieval History who’s trying to rebuild the feudal system (with himself as King, naturally) with fear and blood as the mortar. In his view, you can be a farmer or you can live off of the farmers as a rancher lives off of his sheep. Clan Mackenzie and the Bearkillers are natural allies, and naturally they band together against the Protector.

Dies the Fire is an interesting and well-written book, if not strictly original. Portions of it remind me of Lucifer’s Hammer; and the premise is strongly reminiscent of John Ringo’s There Will Be Dragons. In fact, there’s something of a flood of apocalypse novels of late, especially if you count Eric Flint’s 1632 series. I was also interested in Stirling’s choice of Wiccans as his protagonists. Juniper Mackenzie is kind, intelligent, and clearly sincere about her Wiccan religion; and the fact that she practices what she preaches leads many other characters to adopt Wicca as the book progresses. I find that troubling.

If you think of religion as primarily an internal thing, as a way of viewing the world that helps you cope, then it may well be true that there are many paths that lead to God, as Juniper says at one point. By that view, Wicca makes as much sense as any other religion. But if you think of religion as being based in truth, as being our confrontation with ultimate reality, then obviously some views of the Godhead are truer than others. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus Christ is God and the Son of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Wiccans are not satanists, as such, and I do not hate them or wish to persecute them; I’m sure the proportion of good and bad people is much the same within Wicca as without. But they are, at best, misled–and as teachers, at best misleading. It troubles me to see them lauded in what is arguably a mainstream novel. That said, one of the basic messages of the book is that courage, fortitude, decency, charity, and other virtues are survival traits, and that’s a message worth spreading.

There’s a sequel out in hardcover; I’ll undoubtedly buy it when it comes out in paperback.

This is the first book in what’s evidently a popular series; the fifth or sixth book has just come out, and Tor has issued a special low-priced printing of this book in the hopes of selling the whole set to a new crop of readers. Evidently they think well of it, and on the strength of that I bought a copy while we were on vacation. Unfortunately, I wasn’t terribly impressed.

But before I go into that, here are a few words about the book. It is set in yet another shadow of the archetypal Western European Feudal Swords & Sorcery Milieu. The country of Achar was founded a thousand years ago following the Wars of the Axe, in which the followers of the god Artor drove the People of the Wind and the People of the Horn–now collectively known as “The Forbidden”–into desolate regions to the north of Achar. After the wars, the Acharites, in keeping with Artor’s Way of Axe and Plough, cut down the forests, tilled the land, were fruitful and multiplied. As our story begins they are ruled by King Priam, and Artor is served by a church hierarchy known as the “Seneschal” (huh?). The Seneschal has a military arm, the Axe Wielders, who are led by one Axis Rivkahson, the BattleAxe of the Axe Wielders. Axis is the bastard son of Priam’s sister, Princess Rivkah, who died at this birth. Rivkah was married to Duke Searlas of Ichtar, and gave him a legitimate son, Bornehold, who is now the Duke; Axis and Bornehold hate each other passionately. Both love a noble woman named Faraday who is betrothed to Bornehold by her parents but nevertheless has given her heart to Axis. Already we have enough hatred to drive a moderately sized plot; but there is worse to come.

In accordance with the legendary Prophecy, of which none of the Acharites has heard, Axis’ unknown father has two sons: Axis, and the evil, fiendish, and uncanny Gorgrael, the Destroyer. Soon Gorgrael’s wraiths of ice and snow will begin to attack Achar from the north; the entire land will be made waste unless the Acharites can band together with the remnants of the Forbidden. Only united by Axis, the StarMan, and Faraday, the TreeFriend, can the three races defeat Gorgrael–otherwise, they will die.

On the face of it, this is a reasonably typical premise for an epic fantasy. So why didn’t I like it? First, the writing’s lousy. The prose is especially clunky for the first hundred or so pages, though it improves a bit after that. Douglass has no ear for names, some of which are laughable, and she moves her characters around like puppets. Sometimes they’ll have a fit of angst over something she wants them to do, but then they obediently do whatever the plot–that is, the Prophecy–wants them to do.

On top of that, there’s something about the book, beyond just the quality of the writing, that I found repellent.

Given all this, why is the series so popular? It’s possible that the writing improves; but why would readers have moved on to the second novel after reading the first? I think I know why, and it has to do with why I found the book so repellent. It’s all about the world view.

In N.T. Wright’s academic lingo, a “world view” is defined, in part, by two kinds of stories told by those who share the world view: stories they tell to bolster and strengthen their own world view, and stories they tell to subvert the world views of others. Some stories can work in both modes. The fantasy of C.S. Lewis, for example, is a prime example of work written from a Christian world view, which strengthens that world view among Christian readers, and which may well subvert non-Christian world views among other readers. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is an excellent example of fiction written specifically to subvert the Christian world view. (If you don’t believe me, Google some of Pullman’s recent interviews. Lewis makes him so mad he can hardly contain himself.)

Douglass tells a story in which the dominant civilization, which looks markedly Western European with its monarchy and church, is based on lies. The church is the guardian of those lies. The heroes, Axis and Faraday, must abandoned the lies of their childhood and embrace the Old Ways of the People of the Horn and the People of the Wind. The People of the Horn live in the remnants of the Great Forest of Avarinheim; they are strictly non-violent and live in harmony with nature. That is, they always apologize to the animals they kill for food or for blood sacrifice (!) to the Mother, a goddess who personifies Nature. If they attempt to retain their old beliefs, all of Achar will be laid waste.

Did I mention that none of the brothers of the Seneschal are shown in a good light? The leaders are narrow-minded, intolerant, and violent at best, and usually hypocritical liars to boot; and the one parish “priest” that we meet is a child molester.

What we have here is a story which attempts to subvert the institutions of our Western and Christian heritage in favor of (I’m guessing) a liberal, literary, (and most likely purely metaphorical) paganism. As such it’s a story which I’d naturally find repellent, and one which I figure will resonate with a certain class of reader, and sufficiently to overcome the weakness of the writing and the character development.

Anyway, I’m giving the rest of the series a miss–I’ll just have to find something else to read on the plane during next week’s business trip.