A tree of immense girth grows from a tufted shoot; a terrace of nine levels rises from a clump of soil; a journey of a thousand miles begins under the first tread.
--Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 64
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Yes, I'm well aware that I'm over a year behind on this thing. The lag has to do with a couple of things, to wit, I've been busy, and I've been lazy. Maybe I'll manage to make it up over the next couple months. In my favor, I read less over the last year than in previous years, and I have a list of everything made out. Working against me, well, see above re: busy & lazy. Hugs and kisses to all my lovely fans for bothering to check in every so often to see if I've stirred my indolent bones this month....
| Havana | Pandora's Star | The Last Light of the Sun |
Havana, Stephen Hunter (2003), 416 pp (hb).
Going on about a decade ago, now, I was trolling the paperback rack of one of the local mega-bookstores (B&N or Borders, depending on where I was at the time) when I ran across a male-oriented action fluff titled Point of Impact, by Stephen Hunter (who in his day job is a movie critic for the Washington Post). It was about a back-woods ex-Marine sniper named Bob Lee Swagger who gets sucked into a shady plot in which he ends up implicated in a presidential assassination attempt and has to use his smarts and his masterful trigger finger to come out ahead. It definitely delivered the goods, if you're into that sort of thing, and I actually read a couple of the "Bob Lee" sequels before kind of losing interest. At some point, Hunter turned his attention to Bob Lee's equally skilled and laconic father, Earl Swagger, also--big surprise--an ex-Marine and WWII Medal of Honor winner.
Havana is Hunter's second or third Earl Swagger outing. Earl's an Arkansas state trooper, and he gets dragooned by a canny Arkansas pol into leaving his wife and young, hero-worshipping son Bob Lee and heading off to Havana, Cuba to try and take out a rising young revolutionary firebrand named Fidel.
This is a decent evocation of 1950s Cuba (he says, without having ever been there or knowing anything about it), and there's also some decent action set-pieces sprinkled here and there. By and large, though, nothing about this struck me as particularly compelling. It's a mildly pleasant espionage/adventure thriller that's not unduly, well, thrilling. (And no, it doesn't stray into the environs of alternate history, i.e. Fidel is still going strong at the end).
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Pandora's Star, Peter Hamilton (2004), 768 pp (hb).
The newest foray into sprawling, over-the-top, interstellar space opera by the maestro who gave us the horse-choking epic of the Oversexed Space Pirates against the Living Dead and the maybe-not-horse-choking-but-still-pretty-darn-big Fallen Dragon. Hamilton's at it again, with the opening shot of a projected duology that has humanity once again dealing with interstellar corporate empires, benevolent but inscrutable aliens, various handfuls of crazy mystics, and mysterious alien threat. Sound familiar?
Strangely, although Hamilton proves that in some ways, the leopard really can't change his spots--i.e., he flogs a lot of the same tropes in the same style in which he hit them in both Night's Dawn and Fallen Dragon--this actually wasn't boring. It even managed to feel "fresh." Part of that is just that he somehow manages to tickle the Heinlein-lovin' sweet-spot of my inner fifteen-year-old, in spite of my better judgment, which is telling me that I should know better than to be taken in. Part of it is that he's slapped a sufficiently new coat of paint on the old frame to make it seem new and interesting.
Whatever. At any rate, it took a bit to get going, and it has the author's trademark multiple narrative threads, which can be virtue or vice, depending--here I didn't find any one thread particularly annoying, as I did in Night's Dawn--but I definitely found it a better read than, say, Fallen Dragon, and if I'm not exactly anxiously awaiting the concluding volume's arrival, it would be fair to say that I'm at least mildly anticipating it.
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The Last Light of the Sun, Guy Gavriel Kay (2004), 496 pp (hb).
A difficult review to write. I think I read Guy Kay for the first time back in the early nineties, when I read the Fionavar Tapestry. I think I'm in what might be described as the "diamond in the rough" camp when it comes to Fionavar--there's a fair bit of compelling high fantasy material there, but it's marred by the Matter of Britain stuff that seems rather artificially grafted in and doesn't really work, as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't help that I don't find the Matter of Britain terribly compelling, of course. But in any event, Fionavar, warts and all, showed enough promise that I had no hesitation in picking up and reading--devouring, really--both Tigana and A Song for Arbonne. Tigana, besides being a damn good story, is a fine exploration of identity and its loss, and has a kicker of a tragedy winding through it. A Song for Arbonne is likewise a damn good story, with a spirited defense of culture in the face of fanaticism, and some great individual scenes.
The Lions of Al-Rassan was the first of Kay's books that I read as it was first published (when I came to the others, they were already out), and to this day it remains my favorite. In fact, were I putting together a list of favorite books I've read in the last decade or so, there's no question Al-Rassan would be on it, and probably fairly near the top, too. (Pause to reflect on all the things that could go wrong, and a few that might go right, if an adaptation of this ever makes it to the big screen, as plans for which were recently announced). Al-Rassan is Kay's attempt to tell the story of the Reconquista under a thin fantasy veneer, and is a meditation on the clash of opposing cultures and what it does to the individuals caught up in the center such a clash. Potent stuff, and the epilogue kills me every time. And then there's the Sarantine Mosaic, Kay's reimagining of the Byzantine Empire during the reign of Justinian. Powerful, and of a piece in quality with his best works, even if it doesn't quite top my personal favorite.
Alas, this book is not those books. Because Kay only seems to publish every three years or so, it tends to heighten the anticipation when a new offering arrives. And inevitably, the let-down is keener as well. Perhaps it's that sense of let down that is precluding an objective or fair assessment of the merits, but I can't escape the judgment that with The Last Light of the Sun, Kay really stumbles.
Light is Kay's take on a proto-England at the height of Viking incursions, and is loosely based on the reign of Alfred the Great. The story follows the fortunes of three separate peoples, the "Anglcyn" (i.e. Anglo-Saxons), the "Erlings" (i.e. Vikings), and the "Cyngael" (i.e. Welsh). The leader of the Anglcyn has thrown back Viking advances, made peace with the neighboring Cyngael, and is now attempting to ensure peace and prosperity for his people. Meanwhile, the twisted son of a slain Viking leader plots his dastardly revenge.
Part of it is that the plot just doesn't grab, not like pretty much any of Kay's other efforts. In Light, it takes what seems like forever to get moving, and the narrative drive never really does get up to speed. More importantly, though, is that Kay's particular writerly quirks--in the past, always there in the background--really come to the fore and become noticeable to the extent that they're often distracting and off-putting. One of those quirks is the tendency of Kay to editorialize in the authorial voice. Like I said, it's always been there, but in Light, it seems to show up every other bloody page.
Enough. Kay's one of the very best fantasy authors out there. I sincerely hope he re-groups and knocks my socks off again next time out of the gate.
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