The Human Factor

Graham Greene famously divided his writing output into "novels" and "entertainments," with the latter being more light-weight thrillers.  The Human Factor, though, is something of a cross-over.  It's an espionage novel, but not much of a thriller; instead, this story of a mole in British intelligence focuses on his loneliness and isolation.

It's an enjoyable novel (although very depressing), once I got past the opening setup.  The ending images are pretty haunting.

Liberation Movements

Liberation Movements is Olen Steinhauer's fourth novel set in an imaginary Eastern Bloc country; each novel has taken a look at this country in a different decade.  Liberation Movements is a bit of an odd duck in the series, for a couple of reasons.  One of the major players is kinda-sorta psychic (her abilities are given a rational basis, but they're still supra-normal), whereas up till now the series has been very much of this world.  It's also set almost entirely outside of the home country of the series.

I think that both of these differences lead to a weaker book than the first three.  Part of the problem, I think, is that one of the strengths of those books was the relentless feeling of suffocation.  By setting so much of the novel across the border, Steinhauer relaxes the tension somewhat; in addition, I found the psychic a distraction, and the "explanation" of her abilities made it worse, because it took me out of the novel while I thought of how implausible the explanation is.

It's still a solid novel, and I'll certainly pick up the last of the series, but it just felt like a let-down after the first 3.

All Cry Chaos

All Cry Chaos should have been a natural book for me to love.  A thriller based around the mathematics of chaos theory is right up my alley.  And, indeed, I liked it, but it had some nagging issues that kept me from really loving it.

Author Jonathon Rosen has a nice breezy style when explaining the basics of fractals (though it's a bit rough around the edges).  Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, he loses the fact that chaos means that you can't arbitrarily predict things, even with the right equations, because you're limited by the accuracy of your starting point.  It's a somewhat academic point, but it means that his characters shouldn't be able to game the stock market as much as they do, even granting an equation which could predict prices.

Another issue that bothered me was the American-centric nature of the writing.  The main character French, but he thinks, for example, that a person has "eyes like Charles Manson," or hair like Ronald Reagan's.  It's pretty jarring, though it probably wouldn't work to put in the French equivalent of Manson -- I and most of the audience wouldn't know who that person is.  Instead, a simile without reference to a person would've been a better bet.

On the other hand, the plot moves reasonably well.  Rosen tries to bring some philosophical depth to the story with musings on the nature of math, society, and God, although it didn't feel integral to the story.

The Sun's Bride

Gillian Bradshaw's first few novels were historical fantasy, which I enjoyed very much back in my mis-spent youth.  But then she pretty much dropped off my radar, and it turns out she's switched to straight historical fiction, no fantasy involved.  Out of nostalgia as much as anything, I picked up The Sun's Bride, a novel set in and around Rhodes in 246 BCE, although I'm not much of a historical fiction buff.

I had mixed feelings about this novel.  I'm still not a huge fan of historical novels, but Bradshaw avoids most of the pitfalls that bug me.  One of the biggies is characters with modern attitudes in historical times -- Bradshaw avoids this one completely.  Her characters are steeped in a culture where slavery is the norm, and even the hero doesn't particularly object to it.

My other problem with historical novels is that they tend to throw in all the major actors of the time -- a Civil War novel will find a reason to introduce Lincoln; a Roman novel will throw in Caesar, Cicero, and a host of others.  Here, Bradshaw falls a bit into this trap.  We end up encountering both Laodike, who triggered the Laodicean War between Egypt and Syria, and the King of Mycenae (although mostly in passing).  Bradshaw makes it believable, but still...

On the other hand, Bradshaw is a good story-teller, and has a gift for making ancient Rhodes feel alive.  I'd probably read more of her novels, but I'm also not in a huge rush to do so.

Mansfield Park

Up until a couple of weeks ago, Mansfield Park was the only Jane Austen book I hadn't read through to the end, and I decided to rectify that situation.  Fanny Price, the heroine, is pretty mousy, and her cousin Edward, the love interest, is a fairly dry character, so Austen has handicapped herself right out of the gate.  (Elizabeth Bennett is most of the attraction of Pride and Prejudice, as Emma Woodhouse is in Emma.)

But, this time, I knew those facts going in, which made a difference -- I knew that the main characters are not at all witty, so I could stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Instead, it's easier to focus on the secondary characters, who are as well-drawn as any in the Austen oeuvre.  Their arcs are also the least predictable of any -- one is constantly kept guessing as to whether Mr. Crawford will redeem himself; whether Mary Crawford will be a good friend to Fanny Price; and so on.

Mansfield Park is still, I think, a hard novel to recommend.  Its earnestness is less appealing than the play of her more famous novels, or even of Northanger Abbey, which I enjoyed more than Mansfield Park.

Windup Bird Chronicle

2/3 of the way through volume 2!  We get the second part of Crete Kano's story, in which Wataya somehow "defiled" her.  Even by Murakami's standards, this is pretty obscure.  It seems that, if anything, Wataya saved her from herself.  It'll be interesting to see how the defilement idea plays out over the rest of the novel.

Also obscure is the mark on the narrator's face.  It's clearly got a symbolic function, but I'm at a loss right now to know what it is.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Author Alan Bradley says that Flavia DeLuce, the heroine of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie sprang into his head, seized control of his novel, and wouldn't let go.  Flavia certainly comes across as very much her own character in this remarkably assured first novel.  Even better, she breathes life into the crusty old "murder on a country estate with a bunch of eccentric characters" story.  This kind of story is probably one of the oldest tropes in detective fiction, but Bradley somehow makes it feel very fresh.

Indiscretions of Archie

When I first got my kindle, lo these many years ago, one of the first "books" I picked up was the complete early Wodehouse (everything that's out of copyright).  As I've chronicled here & there on my blog, it's been a mixed bag, with a lot of dross.  After a string of the "school" books, which I didn't bother blogging about, I was beginning to regret the purchase.  But The Indiscretions of Archie was like the return of an old friend -- not that I've read the book before, but the sparkling Wodehouse wit is back.

Archie is a well-meaning dimwit who marries the daughter of a hotel magnate.  (What she sees in him is never really clear -- later Wodehouse is usually a bit better on showing why romantic matches happen).   Archie's father-in-law doesn't like him, since he sees Archie as a twit and a ne'er-do-well, so Archie tries one scheme after another to put himself back into his father-in-law's good graces and help out friends at the same time.  The situations are funny, but, more importantly, Wodehouse's writing is crisp and hilarious.

In some ways, Archie is like a practice run for Bertie Wooster -- not very smart, but always trying to help out friends.  However, without a Jeeves figure, Archie's antics can occasionally get wearisome.  I think it helps to read this book as the collection of short stories it obviously started as; there's no development at all, and then there's a very sudden ending tacked on.  I think this novel is not top-notch Wodehouse, but it's the next-best thing, which is still quite good.

The Trail to Buddha's Mirror

After A Cool Breeze on the Underground, The Trail to Buddha's Mirror was Don Winslow's sophomore effort. Although he hadn't yet adopted all the mannerisms that we come to see in his later books like The Song of the Dog, there are many foretastes of what is to come in things like the potted history of the opium wars.

At this point, he also hadn't adopted the less-is-more aesthetic of, say, The Winter of Frankie machine, with it's straightforward driving plot.  Indeed, here there are several plot twists too many, in this story with twins, triple agents, agents from CIA, two different political groups in China, and private investigators as well.

On the other hand, Neal Carey is an appealing protagonist (even though he turns out to be a pretty ineffectual one here).  The story is fun for the most part.  I'm looking forward to more.

A Spy by Nature

In A Spy By Nature, Charles Cummings takes a very realistic approach the espionage novel. Even more than John le Carre, There are no feats of derring-do or excitement here. Instead we end up with a fairly straightforward story of corporate espionage.

In some ways this is pretty cool.  We follow protagonist Alec Milius As he applies for a job in the Secret Service, befriends his  target, and tries to plant false information about British mining operations.  In a sense, this is a book without much happening. Alexc doesn't face an external enemy, so much as Alec's struggle against his own isolation from his friends and colleagues. 

Suddenly, at the end of the novel there's a reminder that this is indeed a high-stakes game that Alec is playing. It's a bit sobering after the more quotidian story lines that have come before. Overall, although this is the least thrilling thriller I have ever read, I look forward to reading more stories about Alec Milius. 

The Seven Shakespeares

The Seven Shakespeares is a bit of an odd-ball manga, set in England during the Elizabethan period.  Although Shakespeare is in the title and prologue, he barely appears in vol. 1.  Instead, most of the action is set in Chinatown in Liverpool.  The main character in vol. 1 is Li, a Chinese girl who can occasionally see future bad things (deaths and the like).  Others see her as causing the bad things, so her family is pushed from place to place until finally emigrating to Liverpool.  Her father is so desperate to have her stop saying omens that he scars her throat so that she can barely talk.  I found her story to be compelling so far, and it's an interesting departure from other manga.

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron

Shades of Grey is a pretty far cry from Jasper Fforde's other work in some ways.  It's not a happy novel, and the ending is downright depressing.  But it's also got that same inventiveness that marks his excellent "Thursday Next" novels.  At times, in fact, Shades of Grey feels like a travelogue of strange things in this new post-apocalyptic world that Fforde has created.  In fact, I wasn't surprised when I later read an interview in which he said that the novel started out as a travelogue -- the plot doesn't actually kick into gear until the last quarter.

There are very few writers who can pull off a novel that's wholly a tour of imaginary places (Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is, of course, the shining example of the genre, but I can't think of any others off-hand).  And, as much as I enjoy Fforde's inventiveness (and there's a lot of cool stuff to see), there were a few places where the doldrums set in.  I'll be interested to see what he can do with the setting he's so carefully established in the next book.  Also, although the plot is complete, there are definitely plenty of mysteries to unravel in books to come.

Sacrificial Ground

Thomas H. Cook is largely known for his suspense novels, but Sacrificial Ground, written early in his career, is a fairly straightforward police procedural.  In this case, though, straightforward is not at all bad; in fact, Sacrificial Ground is quite a good novel.  It doesn't really break any new ground, but it's tightly written without feeling rushed, it develops its central characters solidly, and the writing is decent.

Persuasion

Persuasion, written toward the end of Jane Austen's life (and published posthumously) is often considered her quietest work.  But to me it feels colder, somehow, than her other work.  Although Austen has always poked at the pretensions of her characters (Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice, for example), here the vain and thoughtless characters (mostly Ann Elliot's family) take up a disproportionate share of space.

Another lack is that Ann Elliot herself doesn't really change through the course of the novel.  She's correct in just about everything she does, so we lose the narrative arc of, say, Emma's realization of her fallibility or of Lizzie Bennett's realization of her prejudice.

It's of course not a bad novel by any means (and her skewering of her characters' vanity is very funny), but I think I would rather re-read Emma or Pride and Prejudice than come back to Persuasion.

The Glass Palace

Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace is in some sense orthogonal to Paul Scott's The Jewel in the Crown.  The former covers a few characters over a long span of time to illustrate the effects of the British colonization of India, while the latter looks at a period of a few days through a lot of characters' eyes (again, as a way of writing about the effects of the British Raj).  Ghosh's book also covers a vast geographic area, with sections in Burma/Myanmar, India, and Malaysia, where Scott's book all takes place in a small town.

But I'm not sure that The Glass Palace gains from its vastness.  For one thing, some of the time is passed over very rapidly, particularly toward the end where it feels like Ghosh just lost interest.  It feels a bit like he had a long-range plan to bring the story up to the present day, but the last 40 years are so rushed that he could've stopped at the end of WWII without substantially changing the novel.

On the other hand, the passage of time lets his characters have little epiphanies; in particular, his focus on the way the British used the Indians as an armed force to impose their will on other countries in the area was really interesting, and not something I've ever thought about.

On the whole, I liked the opening of the book very much, and more than the rest.  Maybe it's because the setting, Burma in the 1880s was so unfamiliar to me, whereas the 1930s and '40s in India seemed to cover ground I've seen before.

The Rook

Daniel O'Malley's The Rook is a nicely light-hearted urban fantasy.  It breaks the urban fantasy mold in one particular respect that I quite liked: for once, we don't have a mix of faeries, werewolves, vampires, etc all thrown together; instead, there's only one vampire, and none of the others.  Instead, it's more like the X-men, with a bunch of folks, each with his/her own unique power, inside an organization that harnesses them and their powers.

The set-up is clearly a way to give O'Malley maximal opportunity for info-dumping. An amnesiac protagonist is a pretty classic way of introducing the reader to things that everyone else on the story is already supposed to know. Fortunately, his breezy style makes these sections less of a chore than they might be. And Myfanwy Thomas is an appealing enough character to carry the story through the rough patches. 

Overall, an enjoyable light read. 

Ursus of Ultima Thule

There are some writers who perfectly marry the style of the their story to its content.  And some who just have a sort of neutral style that goes with whatever story they happen to write.  But I've never come across a novel style and substance seem to be so much at odds with each other as Avram Davidson's Ursus of Ultima Thule.

I always think of Avram Davidson's narrator as slightly fussy erudite professor.  He knows a lot of obscure information, and he backtracks in his narration to fill in those details every so often.  (This is clearly a deliberate authorial persona; I don't claim that Davidson himself talked like that, of course).  This is a device that works really well for his "Vergil" stories, for example, with its intellectual protagonist.

But in Ursus, Davidson seems to be channeling Robert E. Howard, writing a story about a barbarian warrior in a mythical land in the frozen north.  Davidson's ornate style, with its repetitions, back-trackings, break-outs into metered verse, and so on, seems oddly fitted to this type of story at first glance.  And at second glance.  Overall, though, I'd say Ursus has some real high points, where Davidson's overlays lend a feeling of strangeness to this story of what should be, after all, a very strange land to us.  On the other hand, there are climactic moments when one can feel the force of the story moving forward, but Davidson slows down, not so much to build tension as to add another arch comment or something.

In the end, I enjoyed it and I'm glad I read it, but I would certainly not recommend it as a first taste of Davidson to anybody -- the Vergil stories are Dr. Esterhazy stories are much more successful.

Watership Down

I've always thought of Watership Down as the sort of funny animal book my son reads, and it had about as much appeal as one of those books.  (Evan Hunter's "Warriors" books, for example).  This even though I've been told more than once that it's really not, there's more depth to it, and so on.

But I decided to give it a try anyway.  About three hours in, I was ready to throw in the towel -- it was just a funny animal book about rabbits after all.  But for whatever reason, I decided to give it another hour, and it somehow came into focus, and I ended up really enjoying it.  I loved the rabbits' folk stories, and also felt like the story of Hazel's growth into a real leader was very effective.

I know that people like to read allegories into it (particularly the fascism angle), but I'm not sure those parallels make this a better book.  Instead, read as an adventure story with real depth, it's a charming success.

The Monkey's Raincoat

After my recent reading of L.A. Requiem, I had a yen to re-read the first Elvis Cole novel, The Monkey's Raincoat.  For what it is, it's a very good novel.  The Monkey's Raincoat falls squarely into the tradition of the wise-cracking PI with a heart of gold, and Crais pulls it off well.  Elvis is interesting enough, and the story moves along fast enough that you don't quite notice how implausible the ending firefight is.

Crais also at least acknowledges the potential PTSD that will come as an aftermath of the events in the novel, even if he doesn't do much with it.

Overall, a very solid book, and I can see again why I stuck with the series.

Devil of Nanking

This is yet another book that I saw in the bookstore a while ago, mentally put into my "maybe interesting" list, then ended picking up as a kindle special.

I knew that the story-line concerned the Rape of Nanking, but not so much more than that.  In the event, the Rape of Nanking is only one of two major strands of the plot; the other takes place in present-day Tokyo, and concerns an English woman come to Japan to research the Rape of Nanking, who gets caught up in events centering around a yakuza boss and his enigmatic Nurse.

Author Mo Hayder has created an interesting protagonist in "Grey," mentally disturbed and trying to pick up the pieces of her life.  And the Nanking parts were pretty good, although a little too focused on omens, which I thought was a bit out of character for the narrator.  But the main present-day storyline as a whole somehow didn't quite gel for me.  Partly, it's hard to believe in "Grey" as a successful hostess, given her mental issues.  Partly it's that the reveal is obvious pretty early on.  (really, both major reveals, come to think of it).

It was a decent book, and I'm not sorry I read it, but it's not really one I'd rave about either.