Review: Killing Floor

Killing Floor
Killing Floor by Lee Child
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lee Child writes in short sentences. At least he does in this novel. This is the “first” Jack Reacher novel. Why did I read it. Why not, I guess. I saw the Tom Cruise film, was told it’s not like the books at all. I accept that books and movies are different. Like baseball and football. I’m being serious. But at least the movie intrigued me. You know, another one of these super-bad-ass types. Figured I’d read the book. It was sort of what I expected.

Bad-ass type accused of murder. And then it becomes personal. Lots of violence. Justified violence and sadistic, gut-turning violence. Conspiracies. Explosions. Some sex. A “thriller,” you know, a hard-boiled genre for men like “romance” novels are for women.

But let’s get back to those short sentences. Jack Reacher spends a lot of time inside himself. He’s a loner, and he wants us to know it. He saw things as a military brat, and then as a military cop. He can handle himself in a fight. He won’t hesitate to kill a man. Honestly, I think Lee Child might have wanted to write a noir-ish detective novel, but it turned into a thriller instead.

I have no idea what the hell the title is supposed to mean. The phrase “killing floor” is used once in the novel, almost in passing. It really has nothing to do with the story. Chalk it up to some publishers pushing pulp. “Killing Floor” and a bloody handprint on the cover.

A bit slap-dash, like the novel’s style. Not necessarily a bad thing. Not sure if I’ll bother with any sequels, though.

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Review: Killing Floor

Killing Floor
Killing Floor by Lee Child
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lee Child writes in short sentences. At least he does in this novel. This is the “first” Jack Reacher novel. Why did I read it. Why not, I guess. I saw the Tom Cruise film, was told it’s not like the books at all. I accept that books and movies are different. Like baseball and football. I’m being serious. But at least the movie intrigued me. You know, another one of these super-bad-ass types. Figured I’d read the book. It was sort of what I expected.

Bad-ass type accused of murder. And then it becomes personal. Lots of violence. Justified violence and sadistic, gut-turning violence. Conspiracies. Explosions. Some sex. A “thriller,” you know, a hard-boiled genre for men like “romance” novels are for women.

But let’s get back to those short sentences. Jack Reacher spends a lot of time inside himself. He’s a loner, and he wants us to know it. He saw things as a military brat, and then as a military cop. He can handle himself in a fight. He won’t hesitate to kill a man. Honestly, I think Lee Child might have wanted to write a noir-ish detective novel, but it turned into a thriller instead.

I have no idea what the hell the title is supposed to mean. The phrase “killing floor” is used once in the novel, almost in passing. It really has nothing to do with the story. Chalk it up to some publishers pushing pulp. “The Killing Floor” and a bloody handprint on the cover.

A bit slap-dash, like the novel’s style. Not necessarily a bad thing. Not sure if I’ll bother with any sequels, though.

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Review: The Long Earth

The Long Earth
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m a Pratchett fan, like most of the people who’ve read The Long Earth. Not so much that I’ve scoured the world for every scrap of his writing, but enough that if I see something with his name on it, I’ll pick it up. Not so much with Baxter. I wound up with a free copy of one his books on my e-reader, and I just couldn’t get into it. And since free means easy come easy go, I didn’t make it past page 10.

But I figured I’d give The Long Earth. After all, even though I can’t seem to get into Neil Gaiman either, I like what Pratchett and Gaiman did with their collaboration. So for this novel I guess everything was resting on Pratchett. And I guess it wasn’t enough.

Either that or there was some horribly deep metaphor here that I just never picked up on. I liked the concept of the ‘Long Earth’, and even liked the way the “technology” was discovered… but after that, all everything else was just spread too thin. Lobsang’s airship was too convenient. The natural steppers were just too convenient. The Gap, and the very Buddha-like meta-mind was too convenient. The terrible thing that happens to Madison at the end was really very too convenient. I was unmoved by any of it. I wasn’t sure what the plot was all about, if there was one at all. None of the characters resonated for me.

I could tell where Pratchett’s hand was writing the words, his light but skillful way with language, like Bach playing around on a clavichord. So it wasn’t all bad. But it wasn’t immersive enough. Pratchett’s characters (and yes I’m thinking of Discworld here) are usually so dynamic and interesting. But in The Long Earth: flat.

It’s tempting to “blame” Baxter for the things I didn’t like, but that’s too easy. Instead, I’m going to blame the collaborative process. Yes, I said I’d liked Good Omens, so it’s not that the collaborative process is guaranteed to fail. But this time, I think there was more cancelling out than augmentation.

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Review: The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World

The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World
The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World by Nancy Jo Sales
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What struck me most about the people and the incidents in The Bling Ring was alien it all was. Here’s a book that reports on a series of crimes, and contextualizes it all with some pop-sociology: discussions on fame, voyeur culture, teenage sexuality, the changing tides of fashion, and so on. None of it could I relate to. None of it. This was as familiar to me as any gossip rag or celebrity bio-pic.

But then, I’m a 41 year old middle-class white guy with a literature degree, a job, and a house in Seattle.

Nevertheless, Nancy Jo Sales has done a good job building as much of a narrative as possible out what’s really not much of a story at all. Some kids robbed some celebrities. I just don’t care—so why did I read it? Was it schadenfreude? Some kind of catharsis? Probably it was just the architect lover in me- I like seeing the structures behind the stories. Crime rings and the mafia and the complication of long, drawn-out political maneuvering. It’s all intrigue.

And since I plan on seeing Sofia Coppola’s film version of these events, I wanted the back story.

The thing of it is, though, there really isn’t much back story. Some kids robbed some celebrities, I said above, and that’s pretty much everything. So Sales’ book isn’t interesting for the intrigue, but for that alien aspect I also mentioned. I don’t feel sorry for Paris Hilton, nor am I glad that anything happened to her. Reading this was like watching a child poke a stick in an ant hill.

Interesting, though, how the kids got away with it while they did: none of the celebrities though to secure their belonging, and they didn’t even know what all they’d had that had been stolen in the first place. I’m not saying this justifies the theft. But it certainly suggests why I have no empathy. It shows how I can’t relate.

Indeed, my wife and set an alarm on our house when we leave, because we know it will make us feel better if we are robbed—if someone is so motivated as to overcome our best efforts at security, there’s larger forces in play than just random victimization.

You see, we all seek meaningfulness in things—and random kids stealing designer shoes from celebrities has no real meaning at all.

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Review: Talulla Rising

Talulla Rising
Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If The Last Werewolf was a novel about love as antidote to ennui, than Talulla Rising is a novel about motherhood as antidote to feminism. I’m not trying to suggest feminism is bad or wrong. Rather, I’m suggesting that the contexts which require a feminist approach can be mitigated by motherhood. In an ideal world, would there be feminism? Would people be, perforce, defined by gender at all? That’s not an easy question to answer. However, biology requires a difference between the sexes, and so, if that division results in inequality, feminism is an attempt to reassert equality. Motherhood, too, asserts the necessity of sexual difference.

Which is not to say a woman is not useful unless she gives birth. Rather, a person need not be defined by genitals until reproduction is at stake. The female werewolves—and vampires—in Duncan’s two werewolf novels are in no way the weaker sex. Their desires and capabilities are no different from men’s. Until, that is, motherhood is their main identity. This makes them vulnerable—but it also gives them the strength and perseverance to overcome any will that would otherwise thwart their desires.

The question that Duncan raises: is the motherhood desire innate, or is it also a matter of will? Talulla’s lacuna would seem to free her from the obligations of motherhood. But she chooses to overcome them, chooses motherhood. The kidnappers of Lorcan use her motherhood against her, and she chooses to use her motherhood to recover her son. And in the process, she defeats the forces that would dismantle her. Talulla uses reproduction as a weapon.

This is how Duncan is able to write a thriller, filled with sex and gore, philosophical musings, and witheringly self-indulgent self-awareness, without coming across as trite or hackneyed. Talulla Rising is a hell of a ride, but also a deep meditation on how feminism and motherhood are necessary in a world that would use a woman’s sex as a means by which to take away her free will. At its core, Talulla is a tender, uncompromising, inspiring.

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Review: The Abomination

The Abomination
The Abomination by Jonathan Holt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Feminism and war crimes and politics, conspiracy theories and cyber space and corruption, Venice and Croatia and a tiny haunted island, the mafia, the Catholic church, and sex. The Abomination has it all.

I saw the cover of this book in a shop, was intrigued by a blurb that said it was about hackers in Venice, put it on my to-read list, and was surprised when the library had it ready for me almost immediately. The point is, there was some momentum involved in getting me into the book before I had time to know better.

Because for all those subject I mentioned above, The Abomination doesn’t really go very deeply into any of them. It’s a meager treatment of any of them at all, although Jonathan Holt, to his credit, balances them all out and makes them work together.

As thrillers go, The Abomination nearly satisfies. It’s sort of like Dan Brown mixed with Stieg Larsson. But with better sentence craft than Brown and fewer sexual deviants than Larson. And it’s the first book in a trilogy, so for book-eaters looking for a drawn-out feast, as least there’s that.

Personally, I’ll probably pass on the sequels. Maybe I’ll watch the film versions when they come out.

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Review: The Last Werewolf

The Last Werewolf
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second reading of The Last Werewolf. The first time I read it took me a month. This time, four days. That’s still too long—this book should be devoured in one sitting. I blame only myself, a recent minor illness breaking up my ability to concentrate.

Hopefully I am back in the saddle, as I have the sequel to read, Talulla Rising. Indeed, that’s why I reread The Last at all, so I could better appreciate Talulla.

Duncan is a writer to be reckoned with. His literary style is dense, flowing, beautiful. The kind of writing that’s almost too excquisite—I found myself shaking my head more than a few times, thinking “damn, this guy’s good,” which unfortunately took me out of the narrative. Again, I blame myself. Otherwise, Duncan’s writing style is immersive.

And he handles the subject matter with so much grace and wisdom it defies classification as any kind of genre fiction. This is not horror (although there’s horror). This is a literary novel that has as its subject a man who turns into a beast, and revels in his own self-hate and bloodlust.

There’s an additional layer, too, to The Last, a kind of tongue-in-cheek humor that pokes fun at genre fiction in general, vampire fiction in particular, and post-empire British ennui. This thread is not overt, and can be ignored if you like. But obviously, Duncan’s got more to offer, for those who want it, than just a monster feeding on viscera.

However, if you like, there’s plenty of offal as well. Dig in.

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Review: House of Holes

House of Holes
House of Holes by Nicholson Baker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ambivalence. On the one hand, I was endlessly fascinated by Baker’s easy and surprising inventiveness in House of Holes. On the other hand, I don’t think I would have missed a thing if I had never read this book. And yet, to know that I would not have missed anything requires me to have read what I would have missed. I don’t want to suggest that I regret reading it—it was over too fast for it to have been much of a waste of time. And it’s not like my time’s all that important anyway.

Why to women and men jill and jack off? To assuage sexual urges, certainly, but sometimes, other times, because they’re bored, nothing meaningful to do. We are, at our very cores, being designed to want to have sex, and in our hyper-modern world, that urge has been sublimated a thousand different ways. So this book is just a kind of bored act of jerking off for Baker, I guess.

Language, too is integral to our identity as humans. We’re born to it. Baker, here, mixes the two. He’s undoubtedly talented with the written word. So I guess, in as much as I would rather see some people jill off over others, because they’re beautiful or good at it or seem to just do it so well, so too would I rather read Baker’s wording-off over some other author.

But, as I said, the novel’s more or less meaningless. House of Holes has no spirit, no soul, no substance. It is indeed a hole, a thing defined by what it isn’t. I am not trying to be all metaphysical and deep here, not saying that there’s a message in a Baker’s magico-porn. It’s just a tug-book for your Broca area.

Take it or leave it.

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Review: Sign of the Unicorn

Sign of the Unicorn
Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Exposition! But not in a bad way. One of the things that I love about The Chronicles of Amber is how rich and deep Zelazny has built this Amberverse so far. Amber itself, its shadows, and the reflections Rebma and Tir-na Nóg’th, the Jewel of Judgment, the Trumps, the Pattern.. and hints of The Courts of Chaos; it’s all so involved, one can easily fantasize see oneself roaming about, having adventures. But then there’s the politics too, the back story, equally as rich. In the first two books we had the what, but here in Sign it’s time to get to the why.

Almost. Zelazny doesn’t tip his hand completely, but you should know, as frustrating as what’s held back, Sign is mostly just an explanation of who’s involved in the fight for Amber’s throne, and where their motivations come from. (For example, the action in Guns covers years. In Sign: days). You’ll want to take notes, as it’s not easy keeping this family straight.

Which just adds to the depth and the richness. Brand and Bleys and Fiona, Julian Caine and Eric, reflections of the same desires, with Corwin… well, I don’t want to give everything away. Let’s just say there’s analogies, Amber’s places and her people playing similar parts.

So yes, The Sign of the Unicorn is mostly exposition, with a nice chunk taken up by Random’s adventures in a far-flung shadow, trying for a daring (and rather uncharacteristic—or is it?—rescue of one of his brothers). The intrigue that forwards the plot has come home to roost—or should I say, come home to rear, like a unicorn does.

Corny? Sorry. I’ll tell you what—how fans, back in the day, waited three years between The Guns of Avalon and Sign, I have no idea. And another year for book four, The Hand of Oberon? Suffice it to say, I won’t be waiting that long.

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Review: The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

How about this: fractal punk. I mean, if Steam-punk is a future based on Victorian industrial-age technology, and Rock-punk is a modern society with technology like the Flintstones, and Vampire the Masquerade can call itself Goth-punk, and Gibson gave us Cyber-punk, then why can’t we call the rendering of an aesthetic through the lens of a narrow paradigm “-punk”? Leyner’s writing is self-reflective, self-iterative. It’s the literary consequence of recursion. He can start with nothing and via hypnogogia achieve a hologram. Shatter a hologram and any one piece is the hologram. Zoom in on fractal and you’ll have a fractal. Decimal dimensions. Irrational in the mathematic sense and not the logical one.

I am not trying to write like him in this review, for what it’s worth. Hypnogogia, for example: you know how when you sort of doze off while reading, and your pre-dream brain starts throwing up a chaos of images? Do that while reading The Sugar Frosted Nutsack and you will not be able, upon snapping awake, to know which was the book and which was your own brain.

This is NOT stream-consciousness writing. This is not “merely” random. This is not chaos. This is not “merely” sensitivity to initial conditions. This is not “God in the Machine.” This is not even “God IS the machine.” This is just “God.” Or Gods.

Not religious Gods. Not exegesis Gods. Leyner starts with nothing, tosses in some random bits, and big-bangs into existence a story that folds in on itself. The book is a book about the book it is about. The writer is the God of a universe created by writing. And it is artistic and genius and, “Even those who consider this to be total bullshit have to concede that it’s upscale, artisanal bullshit of the highest order.”

If you love Leyner, you will love The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. If you hate Leyner, I feel sorry for you. You’re the phlegm that Ike whispers to, out of which a God is created. Leyner is not post-modern, or modern, or anything. He’s Leyner.

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