Year: 2009

Posted on

Banks, Iain M.: (05) Inversions

Inversions is Iain M. Banks’ stealth Culture novel. It’s told from the point of view of two people who don’t know the Culture exists, but from their reports, the Culture’s role is quite clear to the familiar reader. (The unfamiliar reader who nevertheless is reading through an SF lens will understand it just fine, though a few of the details might be hazy.)

After I finished this, I realized that I’d spent so much time decoding the stealth Culture references that I wasn’t actually sure what I thought it it as a book. And, you know, I’m still not sure. For some reason it’s hard for me to get past “this is what was going on from the point of view of someone who knows about the Culture” to any other assessment of the book.

I can say that the book’s two strands do connect up in a satisfying way, in both their obvious and stealth-Culture natures. I didn’t feel there was anything obviously excessive or indulgent, as is the case in some other Culture books. I have a quibble or two with some of the characterization, but that may be a matter of the limitations of the point-of-view characters. But, on the whole, I don’t seem to have much of an emotional reaction to it beyond appreciation for its craft.

No Comments

Posted on

Cooper, Susan: (05) Silver on the Tree

What an extremely peculiar book Susan Cooper’s Silver on the Tree is.

It has some very wonderful and haunting episodes, both scary and moving. And yet many of those are embedded in a long section with a peculiarly metafictional bent that I can’t get a handle on, that doesn’t quite seem to fit, but that my thoughts always slide off of as though it were a dream.

Then, on one hand, it rests the penultimate development on mortal choice and judgment. On the other hand, it rests the ultimate development on plot tokens taken to the logical but idiotic conclusion.

And that doesn’t even mention the very ending, which sends many people I know into frothing rages. (Or the unanswered questions of why the Drews, or why the huge privileging of Great Britain in the fight against the Dark, or why the very odd treatment of women in the book . . . )

Color me baffled.

4 Comments

Posted on

Westlake, Donald E.: (01) The Hot Rock (re-read)

We interrupt this re-read of the Dark Is Rising series for the beginning of the Donald E. Westlake Memorial Dortmunder re-read, starting with the first book, The Hot Rock.

I described the plot of this one previously, so I’ll just note here how I was struck by the ways that it’s not like later Dortmunder novels: though they don’t shoot people, the characters carry and use guns (I don’t think the later novels even mention guns, which may be a consequence of tougher gun laws in New York City), and generally seem much more prone to solve problems through physical intimidation. (This may have something to do with the plot’s roots as a rejected Parker story.) Also, Stan Murch gets some social skills along the way.

Still an excellent book, but perhaps very slightly down the list of places to start because of these differences. (I started with Bank Shot, myself, and will see what I think of that when I get to it.)

No Comments

Posted on

Cooper, Susan: (03-04) Greenwitch; The Grey King

Okay, so it won’t be 2011 before I finish re-reading Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising series, as I’ve just completed the third and fourth books, Greenwitch and The Grey King.

Greenwitch is much better than I’d remembered, tighter and more emotionally satisfying than The Dark Is Rising. It has good characterization of the Drews, Will, and even the representative of the Dark—not to mention the Greenwitch, who is creepily alien yet a figure to be sympathized with. And I appreciate the way it acknowledges that plot tokens aren’t everything, and indeed that such an attitude can be counter-productive.

It’s just too bad the new prophetic doggerel is so much worse than the first.

Speaking of plot tokens, The Grey King interests me because though it’s structured as a quest for a plot token, the quest is about the least important and interesting thing in the book. The energy and force of the book, for me, comes from the characterization, and particularly the horrible sick inevitability of the actions of one character who is influenced by the Dark. Very much not a comfortable book to read, for that reason, but powerful.

This book also has a conversation about the problem I had with The Dark Is Rising, between John Rowlands and Will:

“But I was only saying, be careful not to forget that there are people in this valley who can be hurt, even in the pursuit of good ends.”

 . . .

[Will] sighed. “I understand what you are saying,” he said sadly. “But you misjudge us, because you are a man yourself. For us, there is only the destiny. Like a job to be done. We are here simply to save the world from the Dark. . . . The charity and the mercy and the humanitarianism are for you, they are the only things by which men are able to exist together in peace. But in this hard case that we the Light are in, confronting the Dark, we can make no use of them. We are fighting a war. We are fighting for life or death—not for our life, remember, since we cannot die. For yours.”

I am not convinced that Will is right—he of all people ought to know that the lack of charity can be a weapon for the Dark, and this seems to me perilously close to the ends justifying the means—or that the text wants us to think Will is right. I’m going to have to withhold judgment until the last book, I think, but at least it’s a live issue in the text.

No Comments