A Year in Books IV: 2005
Wouldn't it be nice to finish the short reviews from 2005 and start on those from 2006 before 2006 is over? (Here are parts one, two and three.)
54. Dies The Fire - S.M. Stirling
The kernel of this book is a big 'What If? - as is often the case with science or speculative fiction. In this case: what if modern technology - electricity, gun powder, the internal combustion engine, even steam engines - suddenly ceased to work? What then would happen to this complex society we've created if we were reduced to what is basically medieval level of technology? How would we feed, shelter and protect ourselves?
Well, a lot of sword fights and chaos for starters. Stirling follows the trials and tribulations of his cast of characters as they try to survive in the ruins of 21st century North America. Not only survive, but re-create a working society while fending off those who see the chaos as an opportunity for empire building. Dies The Fire (the first of a series of three) is fast-paced and engaging, without insulting the reader's intelligence - kind of like a solid action movie a la Ronin.
55. Mortal Engines - Philip Reeves
If you take the time the browse of shelves of what is termed 'young adult' fiction, you can find a lot of very entertaining reads. I'm starting to think that books containing elements of fantasy or the fantastic, that are not obvious Tolkienesque knock-off and contain no sex, are for some reason automatically categorized as being for younger readers. Perhaps this is due to the success of the Harry Potter books (Got magic and/or a 'weird setting? No Sex? Young protagonists? The kids will love it!) but I still find it odd that the works of Madeline L'Engle and Garth Nix, for starters, are confined to the literary and limiting ghetto of 'young adult' fiction.
Mortal Engines too suffers from this fate; I suspect it would find a broader audience were it shelves in the fantasy/science fiction section or your local bookseller. The concept is strikingly original: in a post-apocalyptic future, giant wheeled cities survive by preying on smaller wheeled cities and town - a concept referred to in the book as 'municipal Darwinism.' Yeah, kids will enjoy it - and adults will enjoy the sharply-drawn characters and the imaginative setting. I'm looking forward to the forthcoming books in the 'Hungry City Chronicles.'
56. The Patriot Game - George V. Higgins
George V. Higgins, like Elmore Leonard, is famed for the dialogue of his characters, but where Leonard's characters tend to be terse and sardonic, a Higgins character is talkative with a capital T. A Higgins novel is largely dialogue and setting - much of the action takes a place off-stage' and the reader learns what happens through the interaction of the characters.
The above-mentioned setting is Boston first, and New England second. The characters move from the Quincy Quarries, to Southie bars, to swanky golf courses. Native New Englanders will not only recognize many of the locales, but many of the characters as well. Higgins, a former reporter, lawyer, District Attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney, wrote of the tribal world of politics and crime in Boston and of the murky crossroads where crime and politics intersect. The Patriots Game is set in the early 1980s, and is about the efforts of an F.B.I. agent to track down an I.R.A. gunrunner active in Boston.
If your taste runs to this sort of thing, you'll find Higgins addictive.
57. House of Reeds - Thomas Harlan
This is the second volume in a series the author has titled In the Time of the Sixth Sun; the first book (The Wasteland of Flint) was reviewed here (see #1). Simply put (and to repeat myself), this is good old-fashioned Space Opera, and in my experience either you love this kind of story or you have no use for it. Not sure where you fall? You can sample the first few chapters of House of Reeds here.
58. Killing Rain - Barry Eisler
If you haven't noticed, there's a lot of books from ongoing series on this list. Killing Rain is one of them; Eisler's previous entry was reviewed here (see #10). As far as thriller writers go, I can't speak highly enough of Eisler (though Stephen Hunter comes close) and his stories about John Rain have only gotten better, largely due to the addition of recurring characters who are as interesting as Rain himself.
59. Now I Can Die in Peace - Bill Simmons
One of the many many books that came out in the wake of the Red Sox 2004 World Series victory, and one of the few I can honestly recommend - despite it being largely reprints of Simmons' columns originally published during the 2004 season. There are two reasons this collection is worth purchasing. The first is the series of footnotes the author went back and added to his columns - all sorts of extra details and interesting details. The second, and more important reason, is the columns dating prior to the 2004 season. As I understand it, these columns date back to Simmon's pre-ESPN days at Digital City, and I, for one, had never seen them before. If you were not a serious Red Sox fan prior to the 2003 season (and by 'serious' I mean 'following the team's fortunes on a daily basis') you may not recall the scorched earth that was Red Sox baseball following the 1995 pennant - and how much fun (and how important) the coming of Nomar, Pedro and Manny were to this franchise.
60. The Right Madness - James Crumley
The Right Madness is the second Crumley title I read last year (see #32) and what I said then still holds. If you claim to be a fan of crime fiction, you need to start working your way through Crumley's books. Now.
61. Bangkok 8 - John Burdett
The genre of the mystery novel is a fertile one, giving birth to all sorts of baby or sub-genres, one of which is 'the mystery novel set in a foreign land with a foreign protagonist.' Some of these can be extremely generic, just standard mysteries with some exotic trappings mixed in with the plot and setting. The best of these - and Bangkok 8 is one of the best - use the foreign setting, characters and culture to come up with something new and different. And Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is different - the son of a prostitute, the only honest cop on the Bangkok police force, and a Bhuddist who occasionally sees other people's past lives.
62. The World Turned Upside Down - Drake, Flint & Baen (eds.)
If I needed to describe this book in a few words, I'd say it's full of the 'good ole stuff.' The editors science fiction writers David Drake and Eric FLint, and publisher Jim Baen - selected some of their favorite science fiction short stories from the 1930s and 1960s for inclusion in this anthology. Some of the selections will be familiar to long-time fans of the genre - Arthur C. Clarke's Rescue Party comes to mind but other choices are more obscure. I found Who Goes There (by famous pulp editor John W. Campbell) to particularly enjoyable.
63. Captain's Rangers - Elmer Kelton
When it comes to my appetite for Westerns, I usually get my fix from Louis L'Amour, but Captain's Rangers was a perfectly serviceable, though unremarkable, oater. The Captain referred to in the title is LH McNelly, a historical figure, and frankly I found the history I gleaned from the novel to be the most interesting part.
64. The Judgement of Deke Hunter - George V. Higgins
I guess this novel qualifies as an 'average' effort from Higgins. The Judgement of Deke Hunter was good for a couple hours of entertainment - it's a slim volume of about 150 pages or so - but didn't quite draw me in as other Higgins' books have.
65. The Digger's Game - George V. Higgins
The Digger's Game was Higgins' second novel, following The Friends of Eddie Coyle and one of my favorites so far. The 'Digger' of the title, the central character is a blue collar worker, who runs a bar in Southie, and a blue collar crook, who engages in the occasional heist. The novel finds the Digger deep in debt after a junket to Las Vegas, and the plot follows his efforts to untangle himself from financial difficulties before he comes to bodily harm.
54. Dies The Fire - S.M. Stirling
The kernel of this book is a big 'What If? - as is often the case with science or speculative fiction. In this case: what if modern technology - electricity, gun powder, the internal combustion engine, even steam engines - suddenly ceased to work? What then would happen to this complex society we've created if we were reduced to what is basically medieval level of technology? How would we feed, shelter and protect ourselves?
Well, a lot of sword fights and chaos for starters. Stirling follows the trials and tribulations of his cast of characters as they try to survive in the ruins of 21st century North America. Not only survive, but re-create a working society while fending off those who see the chaos as an opportunity for empire building. Dies The Fire (the first of a series of three) is fast-paced and engaging, without insulting the reader's intelligence - kind of like a solid action movie a la Ronin.
55. Mortal Engines - Philip Reeves
If you take the time the browse of shelves of what is termed 'young adult' fiction, you can find a lot of very entertaining reads. I'm starting to think that books containing elements of fantasy or the fantastic, that are not obvious Tolkienesque knock-off and contain no sex, are for some reason automatically categorized as being for younger readers. Perhaps this is due to the success of the Harry Potter books (Got magic and/or a 'weird setting? No Sex? Young protagonists? The kids will love it!) but I still find it odd that the works of Madeline L'Engle and Garth Nix, for starters, are confined to the literary and limiting ghetto of 'young adult' fiction.
Mortal Engines too suffers from this fate; I suspect it would find a broader audience were it shelves in the fantasy/science fiction section or your local bookseller. The concept is strikingly original: in a post-apocalyptic future, giant wheeled cities survive by preying on smaller wheeled cities and town - a concept referred to in the book as 'municipal Darwinism.' Yeah, kids will enjoy it - and adults will enjoy the sharply-drawn characters and the imaginative setting. I'm looking forward to the forthcoming books in the 'Hungry City Chronicles.'
56. The Patriot Game - George V. Higgins
George V. Higgins, like Elmore Leonard, is famed for the dialogue of his characters, but where Leonard's characters tend to be terse and sardonic, a Higgins character is talkative with a capital T. A Higgins novel is largely dialogue and setting - much of the action takes a place off-stage' and the reader learns what happens through the interaction of the characters.
The above-mentioned setting is Boston first, and New England second. The characters move from the Quincy Quarries, to Southie bars, to swanky golf courses. Native New Englanders will not only recognize many of the locales, but many of the characters as well. Higgins, a former reporter, lawyer, District Attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney, wrote of the tribal world of politics and crime in Boston and of the murky crossroads where crime and politics intersect. The Patriots Game is set in the early 1980s, and is about the efforts of an F.B.I. agent to track down an I.R.A. gunrunner active in Boston.
If your taste runs to this sort of thing, you'll find Higgins addictive.
57. House of Reeds - Thomas Harlan
This is the second volume in a series the author has titled In the Time of the Sixth Sun; the first book (The Wasteland of Flint) was reviewed here (see #1). Simply put (and to repeat myself), this is good old-fashioned Space Opera, and in my experience either you love this kind of story or you have no use for it. Not sure where you fall? You can sample the first few chapters of House of Reeds here.
58. Killing Rain - Barry Eisler
If you haven't noticed, there's a lot of books from ongoing series on this list. Killing Rain is one of them; Eisler's previous entry was reviewed here (see #10). As far as thriller writers go, I can't speak highly enough of Eisler (though Stephen Hunter comes close) and his stories about John Rain have only gotten better, largely due to the addition of recurring characters who are as interesting as Rain himself.
59. Now I Can Die in Peace - Bill Simmons
One of the many many books that came out in the wake of the Red Sox 2004 World Series victory, and one of the few I can honestly recommend - despite it being largely reprints of Simmons' columns originally published during the 2004 season. There are two reasons this collection is worth purchasing. The first is the series of footnotes the author went back and added to his columns - all sorts of extra details and interesting details. The second, and more important reason, is the columns dating prior to the 2004 season. As I understand it, these columns date back to Simmon's pre-ESPN days at Digital City, and I, for one, had never seen them before. If you were not a serious Red Sox fan prior to the 2003 season (and by 'serious' I mean 'following the team's fortunes on a daily basis') you may not recall the scorched earth that was Red Sox baseball following the 1995 pennant - and how much fun (and how important) the coming of Nomar, Pedro and Manny were to this franchise.
60. The Right Madness - James Crumley
The Right Madness is the second Crumley title I read last year (see #32) and what I said then still holds. If you claim to be a fan of crime fiction, you need to start working your way through Crumley's books. Now.
61. Bangkok 8 - John Burdett
The genre of the mystery novel is a fertile one, giving birth to all sorts of baby or sub-genres, one of which is 'the mystery novel set in a foreign land with a foreign protagonist.' Some of these can be extremely generic, just standard mysteries with some exotic trappings mixed in with the plot and setting. The best of these - and Bangkok 8 is one of the best - use the foreign setting, characters and culture to come up with something new and different. And Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is different - the son of a prostitute, the only honest cop on the Bangkok police force, and a Bhuddist who occasionally sees other people's past lives.
62. The World Turned Upside Down - Drake, Flint & Baen (eds.)
If I needed to describe this book in a few words, I'd say it's full of the 'good ole stuff.' The editors science fiction writers David Drake and Eric FLint, and publisher Jim Baen - selected some of their favorite science fiction short stories from the 1930s and 1960s for inclusion in this anthology. Some of the selections will be familiar to long-time fans of the genre - Arthur C. Clarke's Rescue Party comes to mind but other choices are more obscure. I found Who Goes There (by famous pulp editor John W. Campbell) to particularly enjoyable.
63. Captain's Rangers - Elmer Kelton
When it comes to my appetite for Westerns, I usually get my fix from Louis L'Amour, but Captain's Rangers was a perfectly serviceable, though unremarkable, oater. The Captain referred to in the title is LH McNelly, a historical figure, and frankly I found the history I gleaned from the novel to be the most interesting part.
64. The Judgement of Deke Hunter - George V. Higgins
I guess this novel qualifies as an 'average' effort from Higgins. The Judgement of Deke Hunter was good for a couple hours of entertainment - it's a slim volume of about 150 pages or so - but didn't quite draw me in as other Higgins' books have.
65. The Digger's Game - George V. Higgins
The Digger's Game was Higgins' second novel, following The Friends of Eddie Coyle and one of my favorites so far. The 'Digger' of the title, the central character is a blue collar worker, who runs a bar in Southie, and a blue collar crook, who engages in the occasional heist. The novel finds the Digger deep in debt after a junket to Las Vegas, and the plot follows his efforts to untangle himself from financial difficulties before he comes to bodily harm.
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