Sean’s Blog

Bite by Richard Laymon

I read Bite by Richard Laymon five or six years ago and for some reason it popped into my head again recently. I went to the local used bookstore and picked up a copy and gave it a reread. I remembered that I liked the premise - a woman shows up on her high school boyfriend’s porch one night and asks him to help her kill a vampire. But I also remember there was a big problem I had withe the story, but couldn’t remember exactly what it was. Boy did it all come flooding back.

More and possible spoilers after the jump.

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Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

Christopher Moore’s Lamb is the written as a new gospel written by Levi who is called Biff, who grew up with Jesus and spent the lost years with him. The action of the book is mostly concerned with the years between Jesus’s birth and the beginning of his ministry in his early thirties. The real New Testament makes almost no mention of Jesus’s life during this time, and according to Biff it is because it was during this time that he an Jesus traveled the world.
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Since the time it was published back in 2005, I’ve been hearing good things about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.  I bought the book last year at a used bookstore, but only recently got around to diving into the 800 pages.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the story of the return of magic to England during the Napoleonic Wars. During this time “theoretical magic” is a gentlemanly study that mostly involves reading a writing about magicians of the golden age of magic several hundred years before.  This all changes when Mr Norrell, who can actually do magic (”a practical magician”) offers his services to the British government to help with the war effort and the cause of returning English magic to greatness.

Norrell is a stuffy little man who believes he is the only one qualified to bring  back magic to England as well as the only one to direct it.  During this time Jonathan Strange discovers that he can do magic and moves to London to learn under Norrell.  The conflict between Strange and Norrell, as well as the repercussions from  one of the earlier acts of his magic dominate the rest of the book.

I was of two minds about this book.  The voice of the narration was suppose to model the time it was happening and at times it was funny.  Other times it was just  grating.  I didn’t really find many of the characters likable or even that interesting.  The pacing is slow and until the last third of the book didn’t really grab my attention.  That being said, the last third of the book I found very enjoyable.  But after I had finished, I questioned if wading through 600 pages previously was worth it.  The “amazing” type reviews  that the book got seemed to miss the mark (at least in my opinion).

King Leopold’s Ghost - Adam Hochschild

At the turn of the century, the scramble for Africa was just beginning. Most of the colonial powers had gobbled up the lands on the coast, but the vast interior was still mostly unexplored by Europeans. It was into this that an ambitious explorer (Henry Morton Stanley) and the king of a small country (Belgium’s King Leopold II) would set into motion one of the great crimes against humanity of modern time.

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Pushing Ice - Alastair Reynolds

It’s been a while since I’ve read astronomer turned scifi author Alaster Reynolds. I loved his earlier books (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, and Diamond Dogs/Turquoise Days), although Chasm City didn’t really do it for me. So I was excited when I saw Pushing Ice in a local book store.

Pushing Ice is about a crew of comet miners (or more actually comet harvesters (Although why the comets are actually harvested is never really explained. It is probably just such a standard science fiction theme that it doesn’t really need elaboration)) who are the only ones that are in position to get a close look at Saturn’s moon Janus when it begins accelerating out of the solar system under some unknown means.

While I won’t go to far into the plot, let me just say this is a story that Reynold’s talents are really suited for. The affects or relativity, long term space travel, work in a near vacuum, nanotechnology and first contact are all dealt with. And few people do really hard scifi as well as Reynolds in my opinion. My one gripe is that some of the characters are a little flat and some of the dialog seems forced. But none of this takes away from a really great read. I pounded this book down in 4 days (which is pretty good for my old rear end).

So if you’ve never read any Alister Reynolds, this would not be a bad introduction (although I would recommend Revelation Space as the best introduction to Reynolds). I’d recommend this book to anyone looking for some a good novel with some interesting ideas.

I tend to read alot. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of history books. I recently finished A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin. It’s a pretty weighty tome - 636 pages of small print, but it illuminated a period of history and a region I am only now starting to get familiar with.

The book really deals with the crucial period between the Young Turks coming to power in the Ottoman Empire through the end of World War One. We’re introduced to a cast of historical figures I’ve known from different contexts or just heard of - A young Winston Churchill, Mustapha Kemal (Ataturk), T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Ibn Saud, and others.

The world was on the brink of post-colonialism, and the actions of the major players still show the colonial mindset. The Middle East was being divided between France, Great Britain and Russia during 1914 at the outset of the war.

The actions and repercussions of this pivotal time are still with us, from the Armenian Genocide, to the beginnings of an Jewish state in Israel and the makeup of modern Iraq.

One of the interesting points Fromkin makes at the end of the book is that it took Western Europe almost 1500 years to arrive at the modern democratic state after living under the Roman Empire. This gives me a little deeper appreciation for the challenges facing a region that has been free from the Ottoman Empire for less then a hundred years.

This is a great book for anyone interested in history, the Middle East, or looking for a deeper understanding of some of the current issues of today. I’d highly recommend this book.